The World in Which We Live

There was a time, not to long ago, that people weren’t scared. It was a time when the only cars that exploded were on TV shows. It was a time when white powder was used for cooking. It was a time when there was no such thing as a suspicious package.

It seems so long ago that we used to live in, what now seems like, a utopia. When you’re biggest concern on a flight was what the dinner would be, not whether or not someone would blow your plane up 15,000 feet above the ground by igniting his shoe.

I feel sorry for my kids. They have never known, and probably never will know, a world without fear.

Tonight a lady calls the station to report a suspicious box on top of a row of mailboxes. In years past, we would have gone down there, opened the box, tried to figure out who accidentally left it there, and tried to find the owner. Not today. Our guy gets there and sees a shiny cookie tin on a drive-up mailbox. There is no good reason for this to be there. People don’t walk up to these with their hands full. The tin is perfectly clean. Our guy thinks it is probably cookies but because of the state of the world, is not willing to risk getting his arms blown off to find out. It was a holiday. Maybe someone is ticked that the government has shut down for a day and was not delivering mail. Maybe a grandma accidentally forgot a tin of cookies, destined for the grandkids. Who knows. If we open it and it’s a nothing, we’re stupid for risking our lives. If we call someone out and it’s nothing, we are cowards that waste taxpayer money. There is no winning this situation.

After brief thoughts of throwing snowballs at it, the decision is made to call the bomb guys. Now, what we needed was a bomb guy to come out with the X-ray machine to tell us what was in it. What we got was a big hoop-de-doo. Fire trucks and ambulances. Bomb squads and emergency trucks. I understand why, but still, it was nuts. Let’s just say this thing explodes. You need fire to put it out, the ambulance to transport the injured, the bomb guys to diffuse anything left. You can’t wait for them to get there.

They send out this robot. Pretty cool. I’ve never watched it work before. Cameras on the front, remotely operated. X-ray to look into it without touching it. Just cool. After they figure out that it doesn’t appear to be anything sinister, the arm picks it up and shakes it and flips it over. Still no boom. Then the pinchers crush the tin. Still no boom. Ultimately it contained some food. Still no idea how it ended up where it did.

For all the complainers out there.....whatever. End result is that no one got hurt. We have these resources in place for a reason and that reason is that this new world of ours demands it.

Are they winning when a cookie tin invokes this response? Perhaps they are.

..sigh..