The walk of daily life now seems full of peril

TROXLER E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 10, 2001

This week it seems as though we have been living a double life, or, more appropriately for the age of 24-hour cable news, a split-screen life.

One side of the screen is "normal" existence. This is the life in which we go to the ball game, take the kids to school and get outside to enjoy the first hints of fall weather.

Normal. Isn't that what our leaders say they want? A feeling of normalcy is what made it possible, say, to be at Tropicana Field on Sunday to watch the Devil Rays play the New York Yankees for the last game of the regular season, or at Raymond James Stadium to watch the Bucs hold off the Packers (whew).

But wait! Before the baseball game, President Bush comes on the big screen and announces that we are bombing the Taliban. A cheer goes up. Then they go on with the ball game -- almost as if, in this American League park, we had just heard an update from the National League, and now were getting on with our local business.

There is no established etiquette for how to behave while your nation is launching air strikes. The general consensus seems to be a somber approval by the majority (thankfully, not many people are yelling, "Yahoo!" and holding parties), and unchanged opposition by the minority.

So far most Americans I talk to think the U.S. is getting it right. The attacks seem targeted enough. The president's words were excellent when he explained to the world our war was not against Islam, or the Arab world. Limited strikes on terrorists and the regime, food drops for everybody else -- how often has that happened?

Did you watch the videotape of Osama bin Laden? Did you get the idea that he was expecting us to overreact, to flatten Kabul or something like that, and was basing his prerecorded appeal on that assumption? If so we are beating him (and terrorism) already.

Meanwhile, we go to work, go to the ball game, go to the mall (although not as much as the retailers want us to), and return to "normalcy," or at least, what passes for normalcy a month after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.

Normalcy is playing on one screen.

Yet the other half of the story is that we are darned tense. It is just beneath the surface of almost every conversation. That helicopter hovering in the sky, the prop plane circling overhead, each unusual thing draws extra notice. Say, isn't that an unusual trail for a jet? There is nothing now that seems too incredible to believe.

Then there's anthrax. Naturally, it had to be in Florida, didn't it? Surely it is just some weird incident involving the tabloids, and not part of a greater scheme. They said that somebody sent them the stuff in an envelope. Honestly, would that be the terrorist order of priorities? The World Trade Center, the Pentagon, maybe the White House -- and then America's scandal sheets?

This is what I was saying Tuesday morning, just before grabbing a bite for lunch, coming back and getting my mail out of the office mailbox. One letter, a standard business envelope, had my name scrawled in front with no return address. On the back across the flaps was a sticker depicting the American flag, turned upside down.

I started to open it, and a few grains of something white, kind of like salt or sugar, poured out. There was more of it inside. What would you do at this point? A month ago I would have read it and thrown it in the crackpot file. Now I announced to the room in general, "Excuse me, I have an envelope full of white powder here."

Somebody called security. The police came, and then the Fire Department's hazardous materials team, who carefully sealed it up and took it away. Everybody was efficient, professional and impressive. I apologized for taking their time, but they said this was the right way to do things. I was glad they were there. Everybody including me said, about 100 times: better safe than sorry. A new national motto.

-- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.

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