I’m embarrassed. And appalled. And I need to read more.

I’m really embarrassed to admit this — I just found out yesterday what “waterboarding” means. It causes me no small amount of shame to come here and admit that publicly.

Now, I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. And while I’m aware (vaguely, apparently) of current events, I don’t watch the news*. I’m self-aware enough to know not to have an in-depth conversation about a lot of news-worthy topics with you, mostly because I know I’m not knowledgeable enough to carry my end of things. These last few days when I’ve seen the Internet headlines referring to waterboarding, I assumed it was some political term, like filibustering or pork barrel spending.

Then I Googled it.

And I was appalled.

I can’t believe people are doing this to each other. I won’t even go into the high level sanctioning of this behavior, which seems pretty apparent from the little I have now read about it all. Just the fact that this is going on at all, in the 21st century, is mind boggling to me. It makes me sick.

Obviously I need to climb out of my self-imposed bubble and expand my political awareness. My kids deserve it.

*Before kids I had the news on constantly, but I find that the early news is on right when we’re in the thick of dinner and homework, and our all too limited “family” time. And when we do catch a snippet of news, the questions come so fast and furious (from the kids). Some of what is in the news is simply not appropriate for them, but I also cannot pay attention when I have constant chatter going on. Seriously. Try watching a show (any show) with my kids in the room. I dare you.