post the hundred-fifty-fifth, 2013

i'm sure you heard it before i did. i used to pay more attention to the news, but i inadvertently clicked one too many "two celebrities wear same dress" or "unbelievable high school football play". in my defense, i am an idiot who is enthralled by celebrities and sports, but the upshot here is that my yahoo home page is littered with britney spears, kate middleton, superstar high school athletes, and recipes of the week. the news has sat in judgment on me and found me to be a lightweight. i stand guilty as accused.

so, that's why i am sure you heard before i did that some lunatic (or maybe two) shot up the navy yard in washington DC. thirteen people are dead, including the shooter. a suspect escaped and some other people were injured. i really can't seem to get a handle on the details around brad pitt's new hairstyle and donald trump's new will & testament.

i don't need the details, though, to tell you what i wanted to tell you.

and what i wanted to tell you is this.

when i heard about it, i was struck of course by the tragedy. not the large scale tragedy of horrific death or the even larger scale tragedy of what in society drives people to do horrible things or the even larger still - the problem of evil in the world. all of that, sure, but none of that really.

i was struck by the tragedy of a normal day shot to hell. the heartbreaking sadness of the simple expectation of normality. i'd venture to say that of all the people at the navy yard today, going about their monday workday, a very low percentage were expecting anything special, exciting, out of the ordinary. they're chatting about football, debating whether to have that doughnut, grousing about a boss or a meeting or a report that's due, maybe making plans for lunch or to go shopping after work. they're catching up after the weekend and still recovering from hangovers and opening their email for the first time since friday.

not only are they not asking for anything special, they are not even entertaining the thought. special or exciting or different is less conceptualized in their minds than eating with a fork is in the mind of a tiger.

it's just not there, see?

and then, in less than a moment, normal is over for these people, and they will not know normal again for a long time, some of them ever.

they weren't asking for anything, see? not anything. nothing. just a plain vanilla monday of meetings and gossip and lunch and work and home and football at night.

the tragedy is that they expected so little, and they got even less.

see?