So the terrorists are coming, eh? That’s what the Department of Homeland Security is saying today. Intelligence chatter indicates something big is scheduled for later this summer, maybe involving chemical or bio-weapons. Isn’t that just swell?

I don’t mean to sound glib or dismissive of the possibility of another attack on American soil. Frankly, I expected another major 9/11-style attack long before now, and I’m sure one will come eventually. But I just can’t go around with my paranoia up and running all the time. It’s too exhausting.

Remember how we all felt in the weeks after the towers fell? We were constantly looking over our shoulders, eyeballing that guy on the bus, imagining how easily the bridge we drive over every day could be brought down, and wondering if that piece of junk mail is full of wriggling little bugs that could cause us to drown in our own snot. Is that how we’re supposed to spend the summer of ’04, too? Mired in fear and jumping at shadows? Well, I’m sorry — I won’t do it. I’ve got better things to what little time and energy I have at my disposal these days.

It’s not that I scoff at the need to be cautious. These are dangerous times, after all, and anything could happen anywhere. We are living, in the words of the Movie Trailer Guy, in a world gone mad. But that doesn’t mean we have to go mad as well. The fact is, we’ve been here before. We’ve been scared, and lonely, and certain that our whole damn species was doomed.
I came of age during the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, The Day After was on TV, and the ICBMs were only 20 minutes away. There were times when I was absolutely certain that I wouldn’t make it to 19, let alone my current age of 34. We lived in the shadow of the mushroom cloud… and we responded by clothing ourselves in florescent colors and nylon parachute pants, and by gelling our hair high, and by rocking out and drinking on fake IDs and doing our damnedest to get laid. We weren’t ignoring the danger. We were living in spite of it.

And that’s how I intend to spend my summer… living in spite of the darkness gathering in the east. This afternoon I dropped the ragtop on my car and turned my face upward into an impossibly tall blue sky. I felt the sun on my cheeks and the crisp springtime wind in my beard. I put on the silliest, most bombastic CD I had with me — Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell, an album that drips with adolescent longing and out-of-control hormones — and I drove faster than the speed limit and I flashed my best smile at a boatload of high school girls as I rolled past them. I didn’t feel scared. I felt human. I felt young. If the terrorists hit Salt Lake tomorrow, then at least I had today.

It’s fatalistic, yes. Maybe it’s even a form of denial. But it’s better than the fear.

For further reading, I recommend this article on the Newsweek web site.