When we got up this morning, barely realizing that it was Easter, but for the mention from my mother and Yvonne, a very loud grease-removal truck pulled up at the manhole in front of our house. Kaye went out to ask if there was an emergency, figuring a city that closes the liquor stores on the non-existent holiday of Easter Monday would not violate the peace of Easter morning for no good reason. No, they said. Apparently they de-grease the sewers every Sunday morning. Then the kids next door were hunting for eggs in the back yard, arguing over which egg was whose. I guess because I don’t have kids, it’s interesting to me how worked up they can get over what seems like nothing to me. I mean, their arguments can escalate to the point that you’d have to have wrecked my car or something for me to get that upset, and I have a temper. All is peaceful now, anyway. My brother and I had the decency to yell at each other indoors (“Mom, Chris is looking at me!” or “She rode in the front seat last time!”), not that it would matter, since for most of our childhood (all but two years with the two of us), we lived out in the middle of nowhere.
Would that every argument were so mild. If all the people intent on blowing other people to smithereens could just agree to play in different sandboxes . . . but I guess which sandbox is whose is the source of much of the trouble. There are enough sandboxes to go around.
The American concept that we know best and are the natural arbiters of other countries’ internal or international disputes is another embarrassing and disappointing issue altogether. We have a very big sandbox and ought to appreciate that, and the fact that we don’t have suicide bombers going on here. I am sad and angry about the events of September 11, 2001, but the destruction we’ve wrought is just that – it hasn’t rebuilt the twin towers or brought back the victims; it’s simply created more.
I just wish people could work out their violence during childhood, in harmless disputes. If that were so, the screaming kids would be a blessing.
