Thinking With My Skin
Natterings and Fulminations by Bill Cameron
Privacy Fence
It’s not every day you encounter the phrase “bulldozer rampage.” But if there’s one thing the internet is good for, it’s providing news about people losing their shit in increasingly ridiculous ways. Seems yesterday a fellow bulldozed his way through three houses, all over a dispute about fence lines. The good news is no one was hurt, despite a woman being at home in one of the houses the fellow went after.
People. Oy.
The news reminded me of a short tale I wrote nearly twenty years ago about a dispute over a fence. I only wish I’d thought of a bulldozer rampage myself. I share the story below nonetheless.
Privacy Fence
“Guess yer almost done, eh, Bob?”
“Mmm, guess so, Frank,” I mumbled through the nails held between my teeth. One of them slipped out and I silently cursed. I had a hammer in one hand and was trying to hold a six foot cedar plank in place with the other. I leaned forward so I could pull a nail out of my mouth with the hand holding the plank. Graceful as a pig on stilts. How do carpenters do it?
“So what’s next, Bob?”
You go home, Frank, I thought. I positioned the nail on the plank and promptly whacked the hell out of my index finger with the hammer. As I yelped the rest of the nails fell to the ground. The plank slipped out of place and toppled over. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to own tools.
“This fence sure has been taking you a long time, Bob.”
I sucked air and glared at him. “Why don’t you help me then? Make yourself useful and hold this plank.”
“Geez, who died and left you Grumpy Grape?”
“Sorry,” I muttered, realizing I probably shouldn’t be taking my frustration out on Frank. I sucked on my finger while Frank re-positioned the board.
“Don’t hit my hand, Bob.”
“Don’t give me any ideas.” Not that I had much say over the matter, or the hammer. Still, I managed to drive the nail without crushing Frank’s paw. With his help, I actually got the last few boards nailed into place with minimal fuss and no broken bones. Guess that’s how carpenters do it.
“This fence meet code, Bob?”
“Of course it does.” I started gathering up nails from the grass along the fence line. “Checked everything out with the city before I started. It’s fine.”
“Why’s it so tall?”
“I like my privacy.”
Frank chewed on that. “What are you planning on doing in there that you need so much privacy?”
“Sleep naked in the grass, if I want to.”
He nodded thoughtfully, perhaps contemplating that image. I picked up the rest of the tools—the level and chalk line and so forth, juggled them with the hammer in both hands. “I gotta go, Frank.”
He shrugged. “Well, I’d say I’d see ya around, but I guess that ain’t likely to be the case so much anymore. Enjoy yer privacy.”
He eyed the fence one last time, something of a sour expression on his face. Then he crossed the street to his own house, didn’t even stop to look both ways. Taking a chance on that. People drive like maniacs up and down our street—half the reason I built the fence, to cut the noise and have a place for my dog or my kids to run loose without having to worry about a close encounter with Speed Racer. Theoretically, the kids are smarter than the dog when it comes to running into the street, but you never know.
I went down into the basement to put away the tools until the next project—ideally some time after the Millennium. Then I went up through the back door and into the yard.
Didn’t seem possible. My fence was complete, a glorious six foot Palisade of Privacy. At last, I could sit and read the paper without having every random passerby gawk at me or try to strike up a conversation. I could barbecue without having some hippie lecture me about agricultural degradation and protein equivalency units—drink a Bud Light without having Frank over there fill me in on the alleged virtues of overpriced microbrews. Hell, I really could sleep naked in the grass. What a hoot.
I walked the entire fence, noted the spots where my workmanship could have been better. Compared to driving nails, I’m better at pounding sand. But no way was I going to pay some fence company too damn much money to put the fence up for me. I bought the materials—all-cedar planks and galvanized brackets and nails—and built it myself. Yeah, some of the nails went through at funny angles, and not all the brackets lined up right. So what? Someone be sure to come complain to me about it. If you can get past the fence.
Just for the hell of it, I laid down in the grass and spread my arms and legs out like I was making a snow angel, except it was summer and about eighty degrees. Probably looked like a damn fool, if anyone had been able to see.
The sun was warm, high over head and creeping past noon. The fence had taken me nine working days, spread out over five weekends, plus a lot of evenings after work. I have to admit I was beat. I guess I dozed off. Dreamed of pounding sounds, as though I was still nailing fence boards in my sleep, working so hard my wrists and ankles started to ache.
When I woke up, still sprawled out, my mouth felt like it was stuffed full of dry rags. I tried to raise my hands to rub my crusty eyes, but they wouldn’t budge. Something passed between me and the sun and a shadow fell across my eyes. I blinked a couple of times and stared up at a hovering grocery bag.
I blinked again. It was a grocery bag, with two holes cut out like eyes. Below the bag, a black-clad figure straddled me, half-crouched down, hands on his hips. I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t move. My feet and legs seemed stuck to the ground.
“That’s right, bud,” said a voice muffled by the sack. “You can’t move. I got you staked down. Used some of the scrap wood you had left over from building your fence. Had to bring my own rope though. ’Sokay. A perfessional always brings his tools.”
“Whhhhh?” I tried to say. But the dry rag feeling in my mouth got in the way.
“Sorry. I gagged you too. Can’t move, can’t talk. Can’t yell. And no one outside will know. Here we are, safe and sound. Just you and me.” I could almost feel him grinning at me. “Yep,” he continued. “Gonna spend a little quality time together, by ourselves inside your privacy fence.”
“Whhhhh rrrrr uuuu?” I attempted. Not much got past the gag.
Nonetheless, the sack bobbed. “I’m the Privacy Fence Bandit. What do you think of that?”
Let me loose and I’ll let you know what I think. I strained at the ropes, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Actually, you’re pretty lucky,” he said. “You know why?”
I didn’t bother trying to answer. I tried glaring at him, hoping that eventually he’d get the point.
“You’re lucky,” he said, “because I could be the Privacy Fence Killer!”
If he wanted some kind of reaction, I’m afraid I had to disappoint him. Not much you can do when you’re staked to the ground with a gag in your mouth.
He started to pace, straight-legged and proud, hands clasped behind his back. “No, I’m not the Privacy Fence Killer. I wouldn’t care to meet him myself, even though, as you might guess, we have a lot in common—privacy fence-wise. No, I’m just the Privacy Fence Bandit. That means you get to live.”
Glad to hear it.
“Part of the reason I’m able to do that is I wear this bag over my head. You know, so’s you can’t later say to the police, ‘Just so happens that the Privacy Fence Bandit is—’” He stopped pacing and turned the bag toward me. “I bet you thought I was about to say my name, eh, Bob? Well, not this Privacy Fence Bandit, no wa—”
“Oood uuu utt uu iii aaa?” I grunted.
The bag tilted to one side. “What’s that?”
“Ah ed, ood uuu utt uu iii aaa aa-eddy?!”
“Sorry, bud. Can’t make out a word. No matter, though. You see, I’m the one with the power here. I’m the—”
The Privacy Fence Bandit, I echoed in my mind. Shut up with that already. He didn’t appear capable of making out my thoughts any better than my words.
“Lemme tell you what I’m here for,” he continued. “You might think I’m here to rob you, but in many ways, that’s the least of my intentions.” He nodded thoughtfully. “You see, I don’t care for privacy fences. Big and ugly and anonymous. They wreck the ambience of a nice neighborhood. Anti-social things, really. . .”
He went on, but I couldn’t really follow his discourse. The thought of merely being robbed started to sound pretty good compared to listening to him yammer. I tried closing my eyes, but Sackhead was having none of that. “Hey, wake up!” he said, nudging me with his foot.
“Ahh awaa,” I sighed, opening my eyes again. The sun shone in my eyes.
“Don’t doze off while I’m lecturing you. Here I am, performing a public service, and you go and doz—”
“Gi ah wi ii!” I rumbled. I heaved at the ropes to punctuate my frustration.
“You see, that’s your problem. You’re not social.” His voice suddenly took on an edge I hadn’t heard before, almost shrill. “Look at this fence. If you just built a regular fence, one of your neighbors might already be calling the police. Right now, if your back door was locked, I could pick at it for hours, and no one would see.” He slapped his hands on his thighs, and, evidently having come to some decision, suddenly stalked out of my view.
I closed my eyes for a moment, laid there helplessly with the sun on my face. Probably gonna burn, I thought, pretty sure the Privacy Fence Bandit hadn’t bothered to smear me with sun screen after he tied me up. I suppose he went into my house to rob me. I couldn’t see the back door from where I lay. I could see the fence, though. Somehow, at that moment, I didn’t really care to look at it.
At some point the cat came and sat on my chest, fell asleep. I strained on the ropes again and tried to shoo him off, but the bandit had done his work too well. The cat compressed my lungs and breathed hot air into the my face until Kathy and the kids appeared, an eternity later, home at last from a movie and the park. Then the ruckus started. Crying children, frantic wife, stern yet quietly amused cops.
Nothing was missing from the house. The only evidence that anyone had been there was a Polaroid photo stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. It was a shot of my yard, taken from the back door. You could see the fence clearly, with the flower beds along its base, nasturtiums in bloom, patio to one side. There in the middle of the yard was me, staked to the ground like a cowboy in an old movie. I guess I was lucky fire ants didn’t come. The cat was bad enough.
The cops dusted for fingerprints, asked a lot of questions I didn’t know the answers to. They talked to a few neighbors, but nobody saw anything. After taking a few Polaroids of their own, they left, promising not much of anything. Nor did I expect them too. It didn’t really matter anyway. I had a pretty good idea who the Privacy Fence Bandit was. I just couldn’t decide what to do about it.
§
That evening I stood on my front porch, outside the bounds of the fence, and stared down at the street. My wrists and ankles were still a little sore from the ropes, but I hardly noticed. It was a nice summer night, bugs humming around the porch light, twilight still bright enough you could only see stars in the far east. At some point Kathy brought me a Bud Light.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Mmm. . .Just watching Frank over there.” I swigged my beer. He was on his porch, chatting with an older couple on the sidewalk. Talking about building something, it sounded like. Frank was always free with advice. Decent carpenter, really. He could’ve helped a lot with the fence, if I’d bothered to ask. After a little while the couple waved and moved on. Frank sat down on his steps and picked up a newspaper.
“He’s a good neighbor,” Kathy said.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“I think you hurt his feelings with that fence of yours.”
“That fence of mine? You wanted it too.”
She shook her head. “I’d have been happy with an ordinary picket fence. Something to keep the kids and the dog out of the street. You insisted on the Fortress of Solitude.” She gazed across the street at Frank and his newspaper. “It’s kind of nice to visit with people as they walk by. Look at Frank over there.”
I did. Reading his newspaper, nodding to passersby, or saying hello and striking up a conversation. Kathy left me alone with my brooding thoughts. The fence ran along the sidewalk beside the house for twenty feet before making its turn to enclose the side and back yards. Frank would see it every time he came out his front door. I looked at the stark expanse of the fence, then back at Frank. Easy-going Frank. Could the fence really have hurt his feelings? It sounded almost crazy, but. . .
Maybe Kathy was right.
I set my beer on the porch rail and went down the steps. Paused to gaze at the fence from the sidewalk. I crossed the street, careful to check both ways first. Trotted up Frank’s front walk.
“Hey, Frank, how you doing?”
He jumped before looking up. “Doing fine, Bob. What brings you out from behind the ol’ barricade there?” He set the paper on the porch behind him.
“Well, been thinking, since what happened this afternoon. I wanted to ask you something. Coupla things, really.”
He nodded, his face screwed up and serious. “Sure thing, Bob.”
“When you go to the grocery store, are you a paper man, or plastic?”
“I’m not following you there, Bob.”
“When you get your groceries bagged, do you get paper or plastic?”
He didn’t say anything. I didn’t really expect him to, though Frank isn’t the kind of guy to find himself at a loss for words. “I bet you’re a paper man, Frank. Not that it means anything, mind you. Just a thought.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Well, Bob, you know, that’s not something—”
I waved him off. “No matter, Frank. But one other thing. You ever hear anything about this Privacy Fence Bandit before today? Read it in the newspaper or something?”
He kept his face screwed up. “Ummm, can’t say as I—”
“You own a Polaroid?”
“Ummm—” His voice trailed off. I tried to imagine what he’d sound like from inside a paper sack.
I smiled, put a friendly hand on shoulder. “Frank, I need a little help. That fence, I think I oughta cut it down to a more reasonable size. Say three, three-and-a-half feet—still gotta keep the dog from running off. Can you help me do that?”
“I, uh—”
I widened my smile, not something I’m used to. “I’m just so clumsy with tools, and that fence, well, maybe it is just a tad too high. Kind of big and ugly and anonymous. Wrecks the ambience of our neighborhood, wouldn’t you say?”
“I, uh, might put it that way, I guess—” He looked both ways up and down the street, then tried a smile. “I guess I’d be glad to help you with your fence there. Start next weekend, if you want. Always a pleasure to help out a neighbor.”
“Thanks.” I started to turn away, then stopped. “And, Frank, maybe when we’re done we can share a couple of them microbrews you’re always on about.”
(Originally published in the Portland, Oregon Southeast Examiner, 1995)
Akashic Books: Ellery Queen Award Winner
On May 2nd, the Mystery Writers of America will hold the annual Edgar Awards banquet. Though we’ll have to wait for the banquet to learn the winners in the individual categories, some of the special Edgar Awards have already been announced. One of these is the Ellery Queen Award winner, Johnny Temple and Akashic Books, honored for the renowned City Noir Series.
Over the years, the City Noir Series has become an important member of the mystery community, as well as a bridge to the larger world of fiction. With each new entry, we are treated to stories lurid, insightful, dark, sometimes funny, often harrowing, but always damn fine reads.
In 2009, I had the privilege of contributing to Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell and including amazing writers like Ariel Gore, Jess Walter, Monica Drake and more. “Coffee, Black,” features Skin Kadash and takes a look at the dark side of Portland’s coffee culture.
In celebration of Akashic’s well-deserved honor, I’m making “Coffee, Black” available at no charge. In the ZIP filed below, I’ve included the story in PDF, EPUB, and MOBI formats. I hope you enjoy it. I also encourage you to pick up a copy of Portland Noir, or any of the other entries in the City Noir Series. They’re all superb.
The 5-2: A Modest Proposal
I’m anti-gun.
That may draw the wrath of the gun rights interweb down upon my head, but so be it.
Now, I wasn’t always anti-gun. I’ve never really been pro-gun, but in the past I was more neutral. For much of my life, my attitude was, “not for me, but whatever.” In was only the last few years that I’ve drifted away from that neutrality. While my reasons … have … been … many and varied, my personal tipping point came on December 11, 2012.
In response to the horrors of Newtown, Aurora, and so many others, gun advocates have also evolved. Here I use the word “evolved” loosely. Too many have recklessly ratcheted up their rhetoric, but not only their rhetoric. More troubling, many turn to intimidation and threats. As advocacy for so-called “gun rights” (scare quotes intentional), such efforts only strengthen my own resolve. Seriously, if you show up at a Mothers Against Gun Violence rally with an assault rifle, you’re a walking example of why we need more gun control, not less.
Suggested solutions to the problem of gun violence are many, but Robert Cooperman’s The NRA’s Modest Proposal, a poem which is a rhetorical descendent of Swift’s A Modest Proposal, caught my attention less for the way it exaggerates so much gun advocacy today than for the way it doesn’t. Cooperman himself notes the preposterous extremism of gun rights “solutions,” (scare quotes intentional) which essentially boils down to “There’s a gun-related problem? Then moar guns!” I worry many gun advocates will miss the irony and satire in Cooperman’s poem.
Maslow famously noted, “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.” Well, if you only have a gun, the solution to every problem is three to the center mass, one to the head.
I’d like to think there are other options.
Poem: Untitled
Along with the return of warm weather in the northern hemisphere, April brings us National Poetry Month and 30 Days of The 5-2 Blog Tour. The 5-2 is an ever-growing collection of crime poetry curated by the inestimable Gerald So. I’ll be contributing to the tour itself next week. But in anticipation I thought I would share a poem I’ve been working on.
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Man Dip, an Actual Thing
Somehow I made it to age 49 without learning about “Man Dip.” Which could be the name of a toxic concoction used to kill lice, or could be a delicious, artery-clogging goop served with taco chips.
“What is Man Dip?” you ask? Unless, of course, you know what Man Dip is. The answer, it seems, is multifarious.
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Jen Forbus Asks me Five On Friday
At Jen’s Book Thoughts, the inimitable Jen Forbus plies me with five questions, which I answer with my typical thoughtful introspection (my first answer includes reading on the toilet). If you haven’t visited Jen’s Book Thoughts before, take some time while you’re there to check out her other Five on Friday guests, her many author interviews and six word memoirs, and more. I’m sure you’ll be as delighted and fascinated as I am.
Random Not Awful Stuff
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m in the mood for the first post on my web site to no longer be about horrible news. So here, in no particular order, are some randomly chosen (by random, I mean I chose them and who knows why) things which are, I believe, not awful.
I made beer again. And again. My first two batches came out great. My third batch was an abomination. My fourth batch (and the first five-gallon attempt) was, well, not great, but at least drinkable. I wouldn’t serve it to guests, but for a night watching movies, why not.
But my fifth batch shows real promise. It’s a winter ale, dark and malty and spicy. Some people don’t like ales with cinnamon and nutmeg and similar spices, but in the dark winter, I do. The batch is bottle conditioning now so I don’t know absolutely for sure that it’s a winner. But my taste test at bottling gave me great hope. So much so, I went ahead and created a label for it.
After a rocky summer, with surgeries and middle of the night visits of the emergency vet hospital, the Dark Poodle of the Apocalypse has snapped back and is doing well. She has to get medicine via inhaler twice a day, and still is subject to coughing. But the worst is past for now. She is officially a Little Ol’ Lady Dog now, but still has plenty of puppy-tude in her, which makes us all happy.
Grouchy Cat is grouchy. Hilariously so.
2012: Up and Down, But Let’s Focus on Some Ups
My daughter is pregnant. I am going to be the kind of grandpa who occasionally needs a talking to because of the awesomely cool but seriously you did that? things I’m going to do with my grandkids.
County Line stuff: Spotted Owl Award, audiobook.
The Spawn started making brownies. He’s even willing (grudgingly) to add nuts to part of each pan for me.
My wife continues to kick ass in nursing school. Trust me on this, if it ever comes to it, you want her for your nurse.
Rogers Waters The Wall with Ben Leroy and Nathan Singer. Amazing.
Getting to work again with Alison Dasho as I wrote my YA mystery. Fingers crossed for that sucker as it wends its way through the submission process.
Skin Tags. Disclaimer, I don’t approve of vandalism. Whatever. I still like these.
There’s more, but I’ve nattered on long enough. However, before I click “Publish,” I want to say one last thing.
Thank you to everyone who’s reached out to me when the bad stuff was being bad. I received a lot of kindness this year, and for that I will always be grateful.
Arms Race
It took about five seconds after Newtown for pearl clutchers to blame violent media and video games. (Only those citing God being banned from schools were quicker to lay blame.) On the whole, this is typical. Former Senator Joe Lieberman, a man who never met a bomb he didn’t want to drop or collateral he didn’t to damage in service to the so-called “War on Terror”, was among those who leapt into the confirmation bias fray to J’accuse video games in particular.
A more measured approach is, arguably, to ask a question. During the afternoon after Newtown, friend and author Kari Dell tweeted:
At what point do we ask if the stories we’re creating are contributing to the “Violence is the answer” mentality? *commence shitstorm*
— Kari Lynn Dell (@kidell) December 15, 2012
A scientist interested in the matter might have worded the question differently (and not many peer-reviewed studies feature “Commence shitstorm” in their abstracts) but to ask the question in a way which doesn’t presuppose the answer is appropriate. It’s a question I’ve asked myself as a writer and consumer of violent media.
Obviously it’s not a new question. Every time an event like Newtown occurs, movies, games, books, etc. get dragged into the public square and roughed up by the usual scolds, er, suspects. Research is cited, often without context and oh so selectively, to support various pet theories.
Most typically the pet theory is in the form of “behaviors of which I don’t approve caused negative result X.” So Mike Huckabee thinks his particular brand of fundamentalist Christianity should be the state-sponsored religion, and since the establishment clause has been interpreted to mean public schools can’t force students to pray like him, God let a mass murderer kill children. And Joe Lieberman doesn’t like video games so for him it’s all Halo‘s fault (though I bet Zero Dark Thirty gives Holy Joe a raging hard-on).
So at what point do we ask the question? The thing is, we’ve always asked it. During the decline of the Roman Republic, Cato the Younger wrung his hands over the younger generation and its obsession with poetry, sex, and the games (which, for what it’s worth, made Call of Duty: Black Ops look like Kirby’s Dreamland).
We are a species for whom violence has always been the answer. And God in some form or another has always been along for the ride. World War I and the American Civil War somehow happened without the encouragement of Resident Evil. The Old Testament is one God-sanctioned genocide after another. Both sides in the Albigensian Crusades were praying their asses off, but we still got “Kill them all. The Lord will know his own.” In America, we have people who go to church on Sunday and bully or beat those they see as “other” the rest of the week. Pat Robertson and Bryan Fischer think hurricanes are God’s punishment of America for allowing Teh Gay. (Seriously?)
Did The Iliad cause the Punic Wars?
That said, the violence in my own chosen medium is something I’ve long contemplated and worried about. It’s struck me we’ve been in an arms race in popular fiction and movies for all of my life (at least). Each new incarnation of Jason or Texas Chainsaw has to be moreso than the last. Red Dragon begat Silence of the Lambs begat Hannibal—hell, Thomas Harris has been in a fictional arms race with himself.
I’m not immune. Consider my own body count:
- Lost Dog: four murders, one attempted sexual assault, two attempted murders (perhaps four attempted murders depending on how you interpret the final scene.)
- Chasing Smoke: four murders, one suicide, one attempted murder.
- Day One: five murders, one killing in self-defense, a number of assaults.
- County Line: three murders, one killing in self-defense, several attempted murders, several assaults.
In my currently unpublished young adult mystery, there’s still more violence and death. I’ve started work on a romantic suspense novel which opens with five violent deaths. And I haven’t even considered my short stories in the count. Still, I’m a piker compared to much popular fiction and movies.
I read and view much of this type of content myself. So I’m hardly exempt from criticism on this front, even from myself. I’ve asked myself again and again, is what I’m doing okay?
Honestly, I don’t know for sure. My answer for myself is always changing. Given who I am today, Lost Dog is a book I wouldn’t write. The nature of the violence isn’t something I could write about today, and the motivations of the antagonist are not something I would comfortably tackle now. Of course, becoming the me of almost 2013 included the experience of writing Lost Dog while being the me’s of 1995-2007. So arguably I needed to write Lost Dog in order to become the guy who can no longer write Lost Dog.
And don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of Lost Dog. I have readers who’ve told me it’s their favorite of all my work, and I’m thrilled by that. I don’t mean to suggest I wish I hadn’t written it, only to admit how I’ve changed as a writer.
The events of last week will almost certainly change me as well. I’m not sure what is going to happen with my YA mystery, but after Tuesday, I may want to make a couple of small changes. (I’ll leave that decision till after I see if an editor is interested in the novel and discuss it with them.) I also decided to do something different in the novel I’ve just started. That story is still so new (I’ve written about 500 words of narrative) likely it will change dozens of times in the weeks ahead, but one idea went away in the wake of the Clackamas Town Center and Newtown events and I don’t think I’ll resurrect it.
Where am I going with this? Simply that I don’t think video games, or movies, or music, or books caused Newtown or the other horrific violence our world sees every day. If anything, I suspect our violent natures are reflected in the stories we tell. I think it’s up to us to decide who and what we want to be. To the extent our stories reflect us, they can help us see ourselves more clearly.
But we have to be willing to look. Knee-jerk blaming some “other” of which we don’t approve, whether it’s a game, a movie, or a religious belief, a sexual identity, or a host of other things, is the exact opposite of the kind of self-reflection we need if we’re going grow beyond being a species for whom violence is the answer, no matter what the question. We have to be willing to change, to both own who we’ve been and to claim who we want to be.
What To Say
A number of folks got in touch yesterday with some variation on the message, “I hope you’re doing okay. I’m sure today’s events seems especially upsetting to you after what happened on Tuesday.” The messages were kind and thoughtful, and I’m grateful.
But I admit it’s hard for me to think my experience is all that important. The events in Newtown are so horrific I feel almost guilty about the idea I deserve even a moment of sympathy. Don’t think about me, my gut says. Think about those mothers and fathers in Connecticut.
But, of course, you are. I know that. And you’re thinking about your own children, and your families, and your friends. We’re all thinking about how fragile our lives are, and how much hope we have for our loved ones.
In the end, one horror does not erase another. This isn’t some race to the bottom, a kind of twisted onedownmanship where only the most horrific experiences count. And yes, I was and remain extra twitchy after yesterday’s events, even if my own experience wasn’t as bad. So thank you for thinking of me, and thank you for thinking of others. If nothing else, I take away a greater sense than ever we’re all in this together.
And what of yesterday? I’m not a praying man, but whether you are or aren’t, I have to think this powerful and heartbreaking tweet captures what so many of us are thinking.
How do you write an obituary for a 5-year-old? Then how do you write 19 more?
— PRAY FOR NEWTOWN (@Pray4NewtownCT) December 15, 2012
Follow Up to Shots Fired
I appreciate the many wonderful comments on my post yesterday. In my note at the end, I mentioned that I was moderating because I’d gotten some weird comments. The good news, is very few. But the tenor of them have stuck in my craw a bit. (Note: what is a craw; must Google).
Because of the tweeting I discussed yesterday, a number of journalists got in touch with me. I spoke with a few, but not all, for a number of reasons. At first, I thought, “I opened this can of worms with my tweets. I better deal with it.” The reporters I chatted with were all thoughtful and kind but naturally had lots of questions. That said, it quickly became clear to me that my own experience was at the fringes. (For that I am grateful.) One TV news producer asked if I would be willing to speak on the air and when I told her I thought others experienced far worse than I did and would have more to offer, she said, “Don’t worry about that. It’s not a competition for who had it worse.” A good point, but I’m glad others were the ones to do the talking.
I really do feel like I was on the fringes, and my experience is fairly insignificant from a standpoint of newsworthiness. So I decided to decline any further requests. One writer for the Huffington Post made several requests however, so I thought, “Okay. One more.” We spoke by phone, and I told him what I remembered, best as I could.
I bring this up because the first comment on the story at HuffPo has something in common with some of the comments I blocked on yesterday’s post. The comment, by one Jessica Ann Stallings, was much less inflammatory, but the dismissiveness toward what I shared is familiar.
Jessica said:
I replied at HuffPo, but I’m not sure if the reply went through. It’s not showing as of this moment, but it might be in moderation. In case it got lost, I’ve pasted it below.
Jessica, I will be the first to admit that my own experience is just one out of, as you say, 10,000. And, honestly, I think my little piece of it was pretty minor compared to what many others faced.
But yes, in the moment, around me, it was chaotic. To be fair, the reporter and I didn’t talk much about the period later, when I was leaving the mall and things were very orderly. People pulling out onto Sunnyside Road were driving thoughtfully, without rush. I’m sure a lot of us were anxious to get away, but no one drove that way.
Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable, not because they intend to be but because the brain works in funny ways at moments like this. I tried to share what I remember as best I could. Yes, my memory differ from many others, but in my defense I wrote everything I could remember down within half an hour of the event to help ensure my own memories would be as fresh as possible. Perfect? Hardly. But not necessarily inaccurate either.
Certainly you should consider every report you can find to get a more complete picture of the situation. That said, I think your derisive dismissal of my experience is unfair and unkind.
A lot of the blocked commenters have been far more blunt and harsh than Jessica. I don’t want to suggest her comment is the same as theirs, only that I made a mental connection because of a minor aspect of them. Others called me a liar, claimed I wasn’t there, or that I was never in danger, or suggested I be jailed for lying about what happened at the mall. Even though I haven’t mentioned gun laws or the Second Amendment in all my discussion of this, I’ve even been accused of being an “anti-gun traitor.” Whatever that even means.
Some people are seriously weird.
Regarding the “never in danger” idea, in a sense that’s true. As I’ve pieced together where I was when the shooting started, it’s reasonably certain I wasn’t actually in direct danger. But that misses a larger point. Everyone in the mail was in danger, all 10,000 of us. I’m sure I’m not alone in playing the What If? game in my mind. The series of tiny, random decisions I made as I wandered through the mall that day could easily have ben very slightly different and placed me both closer or further from danger. The same is true for everyone who was there.
I actually believe Jessica’s skepticism is reasonable, especially in light of a lot of sensationalizing journalism today. My response was meant more to the assumption that my experience was inaccurate or that the reporting was unfair. I think it was accurate to the best of my subjective memory, and I think the reporter was fair. But it was a piece of a larger story.
Are there more stories? Hell, yeah. And more important stories. I was serious when I told the reporter I would go back to the mall and why. The workers inside who helped others to safety demonstrate the best of humanity in times of stress. Those stories are far more important than anything I have to say.
If anything, I would hope that would be the real takeaway from what the HuffPo reporter shared. Not that it was “chaotic” or that what I said was different from the sheriff’s report (I myself would give his comments more weight than my own). But that people in a moment of high danger put themselves at greater risk to help total strangers.
As that TV producer said, it’s not a competition for who had it worse, or whose experience is more “accurate.” It’s way bigger than that.