It’s so awesome when a friend comes to you with something cool to tell you! But while it’s important that you express your joy over their good fortune, it would be insane to let them stay too happy for too long. That’s just not realistic, and you’re a good friend with a lot of bad stuff to remind them about! To help keep their situation in perspective, here are seven tragedies to mention when one of your friends announces their good news.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
You really do feel so happy for Dierdre getting engaged. She and Matthew have been together for a long time and he’s a nice guy. But you can’t spend the whole afternoon just marinating in this news when the world is still a scary place. Dierdre needs to learn to take the highs with the lows. So bring up the lows, like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 143 garment workers died, due to owners locking the doors to stairwells to prevent workers from taking breaks. It’s really horrible when you think about it, and Dierdre needs to think about it right now!
Boston Molasses Disaster
Josie got a new high-paying job and that is so great! But you know what’s not great? When a large storage tank of molasses burst open and flooded the streets. It seems funny but people, horses, and dogs were killed and now is as good a time as any to bring it up. In fact, now is the best time to discuss this tragedy that occurred when a distilling company tried to outrace the oncoming threat of prohibition. Josie’s gonna have to get some cute new work clothes but she should remember that it could all come crashing down if a freak accident like a wave of rapidly-cooling molasses trapped her inside it’s sticky death grip.
The Alamo
It’s really important to applaud your friend Rivka for finishing her thesis. But while she’ll never forget all the work that went into it, she should really try to remember the Alamo, a battle in which Mexican Troops killed nearly all of the 200 Texans defending the former mission known as the Alamo. Sure there’s a lot of other history here to get into but for now, Rivka should just be made aware that sometimes a lot of people die at once, and that’s worth remembering!
Pearl Harbor
When Angelica tells you that she unexpectedly inherited half a million dollars from a distant relative, you have to scream in delight for her. Shortly after that, you also have to bring up the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, a day that will live on in infamy. Thousands of Americans were killed and wounded that day. For a moment, our loss was Japan’s gain. Kinda puts Angelica’s new cash in perspective, huh?
It’s so important to support and celebrate your friends. But it’s just as important to bring them back down to earth – a place where massive tragedies occur regularly.
