Breaking Down

A couple of months ago, I departed a Walgreens parking lot that was the anchor of a larger strip mall. As I reversed the car out of the parking lot; I halted suddenly hearing a spate of loud yelling. A woman's yell... more of a frenzied shriek actually. My first thought, was

"Oh my God, I've hit her!"

But as I checked the views (again) in the rearview mirror and the side windows, with a deep sigh of relief that came from the depths of my being, I realized that she was actually about 6 cars away, she had also begun reversing her car, when from around the corner, a Jimmy Johns delivery driver who thinking he had enough time and space to continue the turn without harming her, had driven around the corner. The woman in the car just went beserk, she actually jerked the car out horizontally and deliberately blocked the driver, basically trapping him where he couldn't move his truck at all, and when I say she unloaded on him, she unloaded on him, screaming, cursing and flailing her arms about. The driver repeatedly tried to apologize, tried to explain, but she was having none of it. The thing I remember her saying most often, when she wasn't dropping the f-bomb, is, 'Why, why couldn't you JUST HAVE WAITED'  'COULDN'T YOU JUST HAVE (insert curse with ing) WAITED' 'WHY ARE YOU SO (insert curse with ing) IN A HURRY'.

For me, it was obvious, he was trying to get food out to customers and was racing the clock. And I suspect once the woman simmered down, she would have realized it too. But it also occurred to me that her diatribe wasn't necessarily aimed at THAT delivery driver at THAT particular time, it could have been anyone at any time. He just happened to be there, a convenient scapegoat.  She'd just had enough. A tiny part of me sympathized, countless times I've felt the same way inside, but just never reached the point where my anger overcame my inherent shyness, my extreme dislike of 'scenes', the horror of confrontation.

I've thought of this scene again and again in my mind over the last few months since I witnessed it. For me, it seems to be sort of a visual metaphor for our society of late.

You can say all you want about how tragedies on the order of the Sandy Hook School Shooting, the Colorado Movie Theatre Massacre, etc. have been happening all throughout the whole scope of human history. You can conveniently explain it away, that it's just recently that we've had 24-hour news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, etc., but I'm sensing something deeper, more malevolent lately. Just watching people break down more and more every day.

I didn't say a great deal about the New Town tragedy when it happened because it occurred at the same time as the deaths of my uncle and grandmother. There comes a point when it's just more than the human heart can bear.

The faces of the children... I remember standing in the breakroom at Noncompany watching a few moments of a memorial for the slain schoolchildren. I had taken my customary 5 mins away from my desk to dash in for hot water to prepare my morning chamomile and just happened to be there as it began. With me at that moment was an immigrant woman who takes care of the janitorial needs at the company and while there is enough of a language barrier that mostly I smile at her and nod a lot, and we say "Hi" because she knows that word, there came a moment when I learned more about her character than words can ever say. There as we stood looking up at the TV monitor and I was biting the inside of my lip to keep myself from tearing up, she simply leaned her arms onto the yellow cart she pushes, bowed her head, closed her eyes and I watched her lips moving in words of silent prayer. Perhaps for the children who lost their lives, perhaps for their parents who lost their legacy, their immortality...perhaps for me because I was too full of pride to cry the tears that overflowed inside me.

It happened again yesterday...another senseless tragedy. A road of marathon runners, suddenly strewn with limbs, the stench of blood, the anguished cries of victims, the shriek of ambulances. Another 8 year old boy who was there to watch his father fulfill a dream, cut down before he can play the piano, become a football star, go to his high school prom, fall in love, marry. Gone. Gone at 8.  There were others of course, but it's this young boy that I can't get out of my head.

I am weary of hearing the debates over what constitutes an act of terrorism, is it domestic, is it foreign? How did they do it? Who did it?  Tired of the politics...the speculation, the endless talking...

All I know tonight is that an eight year old and 2 adults died and scores of others were wounded and maimed.

And that our society just broke down a little further.