November 17

November 17th is always a somber day for me. I lived in Greece on and off close to 6 years. There was a terrorist group there (thanks to wiki I found out it's believed they disbanded in 2002), they considered themselves to be a revolutionary organization, they went by the name November 17. Most of my friends stayed home on this day, because there were always a lot of attacks on Americans and I went to an American School, ACS Athens. My parents never let me stay home!!!!

One of my best friends, Nicole, through middle school's x-step-father (the only person she really knew as a true father figure) U.S. Air Force Sergeant Ronald O. Stewart, was killed by November 17th with a car bomb as he was walking to or from his house. I remember all the kids that rode my school bus that lived by him talking about how all their windows in their houses were shattered.

This happened during the Gulf War. Living in Greece during this time was a little dangerous. We had a ton of different terrorist groups attacking all over the place. When the war first broke out every American was recommended to stay in their quarters for about two weeks, it was just too dangerous to be outside. There were at least 5 bombings a day of buses or banks or car bombings. After the quarantine was lifted, my parents kind of went on with business as usual. The only thing was you weren't supposed to keep things routine, don't go to work at the same time, don't take the same route, etc. My parents let me continue public transportation and doing things as I normally did before. I do believe they had the philosophy of, if something's going to happen, we can't stop it. My parents were the extreme opposite of over controlling. I did learn a lot of early independence from that style of parenting and I was as cautious as a dumb teenager could be.