ChapterEight

 M
*New Year’s Day    

Born Again Cynic:
Finally!! September 12
Lawrence, Kansas

Ready to Look Away:
Don’t Tread on Me

5
September 12, 2002

                        I woke up late, stumbled downstairs, and reached for the remote control. I wanted to turn it on to CNN. I wanted to see if there had been any overnight attacks I needed to care about. But it was finally September 12th, finally time to move on with my life.

          (Now where was I?)

          I’d forgotten that I unplugged the TV early this morning before going to bed, knowing I might be too groggy while waking up to properly stick to my guns on my post-September 11 plan. My new mission to slide back into full (pre-September 11) cynical demeanor by at least making it impossible for myself to see another videotape of another jet hitting another building on TV. So I hit the “on” button on the remote, remembered why it wasn’t working, and then flipped on the radio to the Tony Kornheiser sports (and other stuff) talk program --- a civilized place to wind up at during the first September 12th of the rest of my life. Considering the extra mile I’ve gone as a regular American to understand what’s happening here in this messed up little TV world, I’m entitled to be a little cynical for a change. Not having to make too many tough choices is one of the big perks about being cynical. Sure, I’ll keep up with the news of the world on the radio and in the newspaper. And like always, once or twice a year I’ll walk across the neighborhood to the elementary school, and I’ll cast my well-informed vote. And as a regular American, that’s all I really have to do (and I don’t even really have to do that).

          And so if hope is all I have left, I guess the best I can hope for (from my powerless seat as a rider on this bus) is that this screwed up whole new world mess will all come out in the wash, whether I participate of not ...

5
Tough Choices

                    There were no newbie incidents that came my way for nearly a week and nobody had pissed me off out on the streets during the past few days either. I hadn’t heard a single blaring car stereo and didn’t even come close to having to deliver a single nasty word to a single uncivilized newbie. Even I have been less petty and more patient with people the past few days or so. More apt to suffer a fool, less apt to look for trouble from the rude newbies trying to ruin my quiet neighborhood with their suppressivly noisy lifestyle. More like I’d become for a few months last fall and winter before the bottom (the Axis of Evil bottom) dropped out of the September 11 global compassion dividend.
            But now it’s September 12th (New Year’s Day) and the anniversary mood’s finished for me because I just went out front to let in the cat and I couldn’t help but notice that some rude, ignorant newbie bastard had parked my driveway off with his freaking car! Totally blocked it off so you couldn’t even get a bicycle out to the street without picking it up over your head, much less my car, which was now trapped in the garage.
            I knew it was an American Jayhawk who’d done this stupid and thoughtless thing to me (a fellow American Jayhawk!) because there was a Jayhawk decal on a side window and an American flag decal on the back window.
            An American!
            So I knew whomever had done this to me would, (on finding their car missing after class,) be forced to respect my no-tolerance-on-newbie stance and would ultimately just have to agree with the whole-new-American-world logic of the punishment I was about to pummel him with.
            Ten minutes after I called in the troops, the cop showed up. He was incredulous that this guy had actually had the audacity to park across the entire driveway opening only inches from cars legally parked in front and in back of him. And in a discussion with the cop about the aggravation of the yearly fall newbie season he assured me that, “I think they are terrorists too --- especially this guy... Jeez!”  The tow truck showed up and the hook was out and being attached to the offending car --- when the kid showed up on the scene. At that point the cop (after showing his own cop disgust toward the kid) left the decision up to me whether to give him the $140 tow job or the $30 ticket.

          I had to think ...

          I now knew about bloodlust too well as it applied to dealing with terrorists, and I’d channeled and directed some of that angst after September 11 toward these homefront newbie nuisance terrorists. I’d been to Tora Bora and I’d watched the authorities smash the terrorist caves there from a horizon or two away. And now here was a guilty newbie nuisance terrorist in my cross hairs at the unfortunate time of a whole-new-American-world era of zero tolerance and no mercy. And now it had been left up to me on the first September 12^th of the rest of my life to decide if it was to be a $30 slap on the wrist for the newbie or a $140 head on a stick.
          I thought about my new September 12 mission in life. To get a grip on my newfound bloodlust (tempering and channeling it), and to try to be kinder and gentler to both morons and goofy Americans alike. To be far less bloodthirsty and sullen. To keep to myself more, get my Amsterdam streetphoto portfolio finished, and to be far more cynical toward the TV or government cultures than I’d recently been. To emerge from the yearlong horror of being sucked by circumstances into the abyss, and to become a better individual --- a better man.
          I pondered the New American order of zero tolerance in the name of civilized order.
         And then I pondered the newbie kid’s head on a stick in my front yard ... ... ... bug-eyed and dripping red blood on the green lawn...
         But when push came to shove, I just didn’t have it in me to do the correct new American order thing, and I told the disappointed cop to just write the little fucker a $30 ticket and let him slide on the tow.

          The cop chewed the newbie out while I took a couple of streetphoto snapshots of the operation and then the cop made the kid apologize to my face. He said he was sorry, and told me that he was a journalism student and was late for class and just wasn’t thinking right. And I thought, “Hell, if I’d have known you were with the 24-hour CNN Breaking News Box TV people, I’d have chosen the $140 head on a stick ...”

5

                   The rest of the day went great.

          After the kid moved out of my way I took a ride out to the with Bernie the cat and we did a little canoeing together on Lone Star Lake. Focusing on what a strange cat I have (who enjoys boating) and ignoring as best I could the ongoing war and getting back (finally) to where I’d been before this whole mess started.

          Lawrence was still caught up in a drought, and it hadn’t stormed in quite some time. But after midnight, just before I put my first day back in the cynical saddle to rest, the Cradle of Liberty was hit by an awesome cleansing thunderstorm. I sat out on the front porch thinking about the upcoming college basketball season and watching the rain, and the sound of it hitting the street in the middle of the night muffled the sound of the whole new world mess that (whether I liked it or not) was still ringing in my ears ...