Intimations of Mortality
There is nothing like confinement in a hospital bed, chained to an IV pole, to let the gloomy demons loose - or at any rate, it does the trick for me. Combine that with the disorientation of a strange town and the befuddled mind (or more befuddled mind) of a high fever, and it would be easy to get depressed. After a couple of days I felt well enough to accept the local paper they offered me.
None of that depressing national or international news sullied the front page of this small town Montana paper that day. That stuff was pre-empted by the wholesome family values of Red State America.
After a day out shooting and drinking, a nineteen year-old boy is sitting in his pickup, playing with a pistol. His friends reproach him for playing with the weapon, so he says "Why not? It's not loaded," puts the pistol to his temple and blows his brains out. Also killed is the sixteen year old girl sitting next to him in the pickup.
It doesn't get much more cheerful. Another group of kids decides to blow up some mailboxes with fireworks. Evidently the chosen victims had some previous experience with mail box vandalism, so their mailboxes were embedded in a rock and concrete matrix. Chunks of the exploded masonary shattered the femur and pelvis of one fifteen year-old perpetrator and severed a major artery. Last I heard, he was expected to live.
At the time, all I could think of was the terrible waste and devastated lives left behind. Eventually, I recalled my own experiments in explosives manufacture - not motivated by malice, but science - but probably equally dangerous if I had been a more proficient chemist.
Maybe those violent video games my kids liked weren't as bad as some alternatives.
None of that depressing national or international news sullied the front page of this small town Montana paper that day. That stuff was pre-empted by the wholesome family values of Red State America.
After a day out shooting and drinking, a nineteen year-old boy is sitting in his pickup, playing with a pistol. His friends reproach him for playing with the weapon, so he says "Why not? It's not loaded," puts the pistol to his temple and blows his brains out. Also killed is the sixteen year old girl sitting next to him in the pickup.
It doesn't get much more cheerful. Another group of kids decides to blow up some mailboxes with fireworks. Evidently the chosen victims had some previous experience with mail box vandalism, so their mailboxes were embedded in a rock and concrete matrix. Chunks of the exploded masonary shattered the femur and pelvis of one fifteen year-old perpetrator and severed a major artery. Last I heard, he was expected to live.
At the time, all I could think of was the terrible waste and devastated lives left behind. Eventually, I recalled my own experiments in explosives manufacture - not motivated by malice, but science - but probably equally dangerous if I had been a more proficient chemist.
Maybe those violent video games my kids liked weren't as bad as some alternatives.
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