Radical Acts in Public Places
I will preface this story by stating how lucky I feel. I went through my entire childhood (K-12) late enough to never have had to hide under a desk from an atomic threat, but also early enough that I never had to experience an “active shooter drill”. Beyond this, I am lucky to have never lost a close friend or family member to an act of terrorism. It saddens me deeply to think that every day the number of people that can make that statement is growing smaller and smaller.
This is a story about a specific day in the fall of 2012 that has been on my mind lately. Amy (now my wife) was visiting me in Denver and we were enjoying a stroll through the heavily foot-trafficked streets of downtown. As we paused in a public square, I began to get the feeling that something was wrong.
(*note* At this point, it might be worth noting that I am mentally “hard-wired” for both pattern recognition and risk reduction. These attributes largely explain what happened next.)
As I looked around the square to better understand this sensation. I noticed that the movement of the pedestrians was unusual. There was a great deal of aimless milling around, as opposed to the usual more direct traffic from “Point A to Point B” of a bustling city like Denver. As I scanned the outer edges of the block, I saw that the “wanderers” tended to be people of ages in the low to mid-twenties. They seemed to be waiting for something. As I focused in on these people, I saw them making nervous glances towards one another while seemingly trying to act inconspicuous. I said to Amy, “Something is about to happen here. We need to go.”
Amy replied, “What do you mean? I want to see what’s going on.”
While she and I had this exchange, I saw the suspicious actors begin to slowly converge on the square. Unsuspecting pedestrians were crisscrossing right through the center of their shrinking circle. I took Amy by the arm and started pulling her backward out of “harm’s way”. I said “We really need to move...now,” and she reluctantly joined me in crossing the street. Then it happened.
On this otherwise ordinary autumn day, Writer Square in Denver erupted into song! I think it was a number from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. We got to witness our first flash-mob and these wonderful college-aged performers danced and sang their hearts out to the total delight of everyone lucky enough to be there! Everyone smiled and cheered. Amy, a huge fan of musical theater, was so overjoyed that she even cried. When she flew back to the East Coast a few days later, seeing the flash mob was clearly the highlight of her trip. We still talk about it today.
When I think back on that day however, I confess to still experiencing mixed emotions. I remember the anxiety of wanting to escape and not being able to get someone I cared about to see the same danger that I saw. Sometimes I am pleased that I was able to see the “threat” even though it ended up being a false alarm. Sometimes I am embarrassed that an abundance of caution could have caused me to miss out on something magical if Amy were not there to counter my instincts. I worry about my wife, wondering if someday her urge to see “what’s going on” could get her hurt. The risk-avoider in me says I will gladly miss a thousand flash mobs to avoid one mass casualty event. My inner idealist says that a society that sacrifices joy in the name of fear, has all but lost the “war on terror”. I don’t know which voice is right.
In the last week or so, I have been part of an increasing number of conversations about dealing with fear. People have been opening up about the fact that they now look for the fastest way out of any new room they enter. They may look at strangers today with a more critical eye than they had in the past. I just learned that our community is about to host an event on “Surviving the Active Lethal Threat”.
This is usually the part of an essay where I would try to draw a clever parallel between the story above and some topics related to financial planning or investments (Top of mind are “Risk vs. Reward” and “Exit Strategies”), but this is not one of those articles. Over the past week, I have simply been unable to sit down and write anything else...not until I worked through this. I don’t have the answers, but I would love to hear yours. I know that not talking about these things won’t help at all.
I look forward to getting back to my usual content over the next few days, and I apologize for those who follow me exclusively for “shop talk”. I only share this here because I feel a certain responsibility to keep the conversation going in whatever way I can, and through Upleft, I have a few hundred more readers than I would otherwise. It is terribly frustrating that the public response to an attack, and our ability to move on to the next distraction, have become so routine. Who knows what could happen if a few extra people help to keep the conversation going?