Whether To Smile Or Something Else

Yesterday, people at my office were talking about 9/11. That murky, sinister incident will color much of the 21st century, I think. It is the “flashbulb memory” of younger people, much as JFK’s assassination was for the generation before mine. I actually remember the day of JFK’s shooting, being a small boy and seeing my mother and grandmother cry, and telling me that a bad man had shot the President.

My coworkers were playing the “What were you doing when the planes hit the towers?” game, and one of the women with whom I work was asked the question. Her response brought me to an internal standstill.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

The others pressed her from different angles — surely she could recall something about that day — but she was adamant. She couldn’t remember anything about the news of the NYC upheaval.

One is unsure of how to react to such a thing.

***

On the way to work this morning, I listened to a 1969 recording of Malcolm Muggeridge interviewing the poet Robert Graves. It was very lively and entertaining in a refrigerated sort of way. I was struck by the difference in the level of discourse between two men back then and how such an interview would play out a half-century later.

And I would pay admission just to hear Mr. Muggeridge say the word “homosexuality” over and over again.

~ S.K. Orr