WOW Moment by SAMAR Al Ansari

- "Weng, where are my pink beach shorts? I need you to iron them now because I'm going to the beach after my economics course!"
- 'I don't know Samar, why not say to me yesterday?'
- ' Oh Weng! I'm really late for school, just send it with James!'
- 'Yup, that's what was on my mind on the morning of July the 5th, 2005.
- That's all that mattered to me. My pink shorts! After several minutes of frantic searching, I began to curse my luck and think 'why me?'
At that moment, it seemed like a pretty big deal. I mean, I needed my cute pink shorts, because a day at the beach wouldn't be the same without them. After swallowing down tears of anger and frustration, I went to school for my economics course. I tried to focus on the lesson, but all I could think about were my missing shorts. So about an hour and a half later, I called my house to check up on the shorts, but Weng, my housemaid didn't pick up…my sister did.

-'Hey, where's Weng?'
-'Umm….Samar, I have something to tell you.'
-'You found my shorts?'
-' Shorts? Umm, no….it's uncle Hassan. He was shot.'

I could not believe it when I heard it. It all seemed so unreal. I know that my uncle was in Baghdad, and that Baghdad wasn't exactly the safest area to be in at the moment. But, I thought since he was an ambassador, he would be all right. You know, because of all the bodyguards and stuff.

After that I rushed home and called my Dad to see if everything was all right. My Dad assured me that my uncle was in good hands and that everything was under control. Shortly after, I went on line and saw this headline on the upper right hand corner of the Yahoo homepage 'Bahraini Top Diplomat shot in Baghdad". It was so weird reading about my wounded uncle, and the images were quite disturbing.

I got up from my seat and went to make a phone call and saw that my pink shorts were on my bed. I just stared at them and thought about how much has changed in the past two hours. I felt as if my whole attitude to life changed. A few hours ago, I was worried about such an insignificant object while I should've been thanking God for that being the most of my worries. It only takes one thing to alter your perspective. At that instant, I made a clean cut on what was important and what wasn't. So, my advice to you…. "Don't sweat the small stuff."

Samar Al Ansari
September 3rd,2005
Grade 12 IB