There are points in our lives that change us.
For me it began with the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was a high school student in the Panama Canal Zone - the high school being about a mile from a designated nuclear target, and U2 planes flying over the school on take off and landing - "taking air samples over Cuba", around the clock.
The Canal Zone was the HQ for USARCARIB (US Armed forces CARIBbean) and the tension was palpable. Humanity came terribly close to extinction during those few days. How close we've only learned recently. All those air raid drills we grew up with seemed pretty pointless.
The Civics class teacher entering the classroom - face pale, struggling for words and ways to tell us our president had been shot and killed. Living in Latin America, presidents and generals were assassinated often enough to seem not unusual
- President Ramon of Panama, Somoza- the military dictator of Guatemala or Nicaragua or some other Central American country. But that didn't happen in the United States - we were different. But we weren't and we aren't. We're a little more "sophisticated" and often don't have actual physical assassinations - we just assassinate reputations and character.
But I digress.
And when hope returned - Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were assassinated by a former San Francisco supervisor and former policeman - in City Hall. Realing from that one, another blow - Jonestown, Gueanna (sp?). And then Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated.
Perhaps we weren't any different than "those places" where leaders and dreamers and poets and peace makers died suddenly and violently because they posed a real or perceived threat to "someone".
Hinkley shoots Raegen (I'm still not sure how to spell his name and he was the governor of my state and president of my country - mental block I guess) - to impress Foster? Has the world gone mad? (Anyone remember Jim Brady - another victim of that day?)
Who knows how many kids died of gun shot wounds in drive bys or stabbed to death at or near school or in front of their houses. Their deaths went unnoticed. But when middle class white boys coldly and methodically blow away classmates and teachers - in the school - we sat up and took notice - at least for a while. How could this happen? Why did this happen? Who is to blame? Something must be done!
But it's happened enough since then to no longer be as shocking, or noteworthy.
We're a relatively young country and perhaps we'll grow out of it. Maybe our vocabulary will change as we mature. Maybe "war" will gain back the meaning it has for those who fought the war we call World War II. And maybe we won't throw the term around quite so lightly as we have with our "war on poverty" (HUH!?), "war on drugs" and now "war on terrorists/terrorism". Well, let's try "war on campaign financing" and then get back to the word's true meaning.
In the mean time, let's all try, if only briefly, to be more considerate of others, to lend a helping hand or provide a comforting word when it's needed. The big events stick in our minds - but it's the little day to day things we do that make tomorrow a little better or a little worse than yesterday - for all of us. Things change one person at a time. What're you going to do tomorrow?
Donning his Nomex suit he said - "Ya'll take care now."
charlie b