Afraid of the Dark

I woke up late yesterday. In my scramble to get to the bus stop on time, I forgot to put the book I’m currently reading into my tote bag and wound up at the downtown diner with nothing to occupy my eyeballs while I ate breakfast. A previous customer had abandoned a newspaper on the table beside mine. I picked it up and remembered why I never read newspapers. They’re just so depressing.

For example, yesterday’s paper contained three fatal shootings, a landslide that killed seventeen people, an update on the trial of a young man who murdered his mother, two alcohol-related car crashes for a total of eight dead, an exposé on nursing home abuse, the kidnapping of a red cross worker in Pakistan, a report on drug addiction among the homeless, a celebrity break up, and a political bun fight over parking fees. And that was just the front page.

It put me right off my food. I abandoned my chicken salad and lettuce on a toasted sesame bagel and walked over to the bank to replenish my pocket change.

What disturbed me most about the news—except for the landslide, a natural disaster and therefore unavoidable—was that it all revolved around the dark side of humanity, the angry, the venial, the rebellious, the downright stupid. I’ve gone to considerable effort to eradicate these elements from my life and felt quite annoyed with myself for allowing them back in via the newspaper.

Let’s start with guns. I don’t own a gun. I don’t hang out with anyone who owns a gun. I don’t want to hang out with anyone who owns a gun, so if you know me, and I find out you own a gun, prepare to be shunned. There are no good uses for guns in a civilized world. Guns (and bombs, and any other form of long range killing) are all about intimidation and domination from a safe distance; the tools of cowards. I think I might enjoy reading about a war fought with fists instead of guns, although I imagine fewer people would want to fight them. If I found genie in a lamp, my first wish would be that guns no longer existed.

For my second wish, I’d make all addictive substances instantly fatal. This may sound harsh, but it’s actually a kindness in disguise. There would be no homeless drug addicts wandering the streets and far fewer botched convenience store robberies. Alcohol-related traffic deaths would drop to zero. Taxes would plummet as governments saved billions (and billions and billions) of dollars by not having to fight the war on drugs. There would be no babies born addicted to heroin, or with fetal alcohol syndrome. Best of all, I could afford a humungous flat screen HD TV and state of the art blue ray player with all the money I’d save if I could kick my nicotine addiction.

I arrived at the bank and entered the vestibule where the ATM machines are. As I punched in my secret pin number, a man entered the vestibule. He wasn’t a terribly savory-looking character. In fact, he was downright seedy. His clothing was stained, his hair was matted, and even from ten feet away, I could detect the unmistakable odor of a person who’d tied one on the night before. Instead of going to an ATM, the only reason I could think of for entering the vestibule, he stood just inside the door, searching for something in the bulging pockets of his duffel coat.

Hyper-sensitized to the prevalence of crime in our society by my run in with the newspaper, I tried to decide whether I should continue my transaction and run the risk of being robbed, or whether it would be better to abort the transaction and come back later when the bank was open. When I’m afraid, I get angry and defiant. I turned around and stared at him. He moved to the ATM furthest from mine and kept looking through his pockets until he found his debit card.

My third wish would be to live in a world not dominated by fear. Because honestly, I can’t imagine how people who read newspapers can even step outside their front doors.