This Perspective Sucks

I miss the perspective I had as a kid. Watching cartoons and seeing Wile E. Coyote accidentally blow himself up every episode, his fur charred and smoking one minute, back to chasing that roadrunner the next. Donald Duck getting his bill blown around by Elmer Fudd’s rifle during Duck Season (No, Rabbit Season!). That’s what I knew of bombs and guns at nine years old.

At nine years old, my son knows that bombs and guns maim and kill people and not just during war or in far away countries. He felt the fear that the Sandy Hook massacre instilled, and the distress from the recent Boston bombings. He read about the horrifying events of September 11^th. At nine years old, he knows far too much about terrorism…and terror.

Yes, there are good things that can be found after these tragedies, good people and good deeds. You can say that it makes us appreciate what truly matters. But frankly, I’m tired of the perspective this is giving me. I already hold my son tight every day and feel a deep gratitude for him and my husband. I don’t need any more perspective, thank you very much. I want to go back to taking things for granted. I want to start complaining again about shallow things like my diet and my hair. I want to focus on trivial matters like what I’m making for dinner or where we’re going for summer vacation. I don’t want these few sick, evil people to linger in our lives. It’s bad enough they touch our lives at all. I don’t want them casting their shadows over us as we travel, as we send our children to school, as we go to the theater or the city or the mall. I don’t want them to haunt our dreams or heighten our anxieties about our children’s future.

My friend ran the Boston Marathon on Monday. Thankfully, she and her friends had finished the race and met up with their spouses before the explosions. She came home to her kids, who normally would have been full of pride, but instead were full of fear. They told her they didn’t want her to run any more marathons.

As a community and a country, we can’t ignore these events. But as an individual, I want to disregard them as best I can. I asked my friend her time. I congratulated her on finishing the race. Of course, she didn’t bring out her medal, but I had hoped she would, because that’s what she should’ve been doing two days after that event, celebrating. And I should’ve been making my jokes about runners. And then my non-runner friends could be chiming in about what it would take for us to run marathons, like being baited by a Krispy Kreme on a stick. Because when we can be engaged in things that are frivolous and inconsequential, even silly -- that’s when everything’s right with the world. I don’t need more perspective to know that.