Isolation II

(This must be series week.)

On Thursday, I left the house around 4:30 for my favorite destination the post office. As I turned on the radio to discover nothing much had happened all day (yet again, I find myself needing to rephrase that. Nothing much was going on in the USA, nor with any of its citizens, that would grab the attention of the ADHD-infected American public – no runaway brides, no runaway vans carrying O.J. Simpsons, no new births for Angelina Jolie. By the way, as my sister pointed out to me, have you noticed how no one ever had a baby before she did?), I realized I’ve become almost completely cut off from what’s going on in the outside world. If another 9/11 were to occur, unless the target this time happened to be very small Northeastern towns over-run with dry cleaners and banks, thus marking my town as the perfect spot, when would I find out about it?

We subscribe to The New York Times, but I’m an evening paper-reader. I take a quick look at the headlines in the morning, as Bob rifles through to get the sports section to enjoy with his breakfast (no rule against reading at the table in our household, no matter how rude I was brought up to believe it is), and set it aside until I can settle down with it either just before or just after dinner. I’m surprised this ritual has survived since I began working from home, but it has.

When I commuted to work, I depended on the radio to keep me informed. For a while, I enjoyed “Imus in the Morning,” but his shtick eventually became tiresome, and I found myself disagreeing with him more often than not, which often meant arriving at work in a bad temper. I switched to CBS’s “all news, all the time,” but then standard commercial news broadcasting also began to get on my nerves. Too much “much ado about nothing.”
Ultimately, cringing over the fact I’d become my parents (I should be listening to Bruce Springsteen, The Jayhawks, and David Bowie CDs on my way to work, not boring, half-whispered, monotone voices raising politically correct issues), I started tuning in to NPR, which I soon discovered helped decrease my NYT’s reading time by half, thus allowing me to get to the crossword puzzle (dessert) more quickly. (I don’t know what my attraction is to the crossword puzzle. I can never complete it, except on “idiot Monday.”)

When I was actually in the office, my colleagues kept me informed. I’m not one who visits many news websites, except NYT’s, which I often dismiss, rationalizing I’ll read it in the evening (aside from Doonsbury, of course, which is only available via the online version). My co-workers were the ones who informed me, just prior to my attending some meeting, that an airplane had flown into the World Trade Center. My reaction was, “Oh, some lunatic losing his way.” By the time I exited that meeting, half the company was trying to crowd into our office manager’s little office, because he had a small T.V. in there. Everyone was telling us both towers had been hit, as well as the Pentagon. Bob – another conduit of information for me -- happened to work at the same company with me, and we had, in a rare moment, both been in that meeting together, so we were together when we received this news. I was busy thinking, “Gotta be some new Neo-Nazi moron behind this.” Bob’s first comment was, “Osama Bin Laden” (he reads more than just the sports section of the NYT). Soon after that, the office closed, and we all went home to spend an afternoon glued to the television.

Nowadays, the television is right across the hall from my office, in the same room we spent that memorable afternoon, yet I’m at my computer paying absolutely no attention to the news. Bob’s in a hospital where no one’s watching the news except those patients willing to pay for television access (only someone with a truly Machiavellian nature could have come up with that one. There you are, lying in bed, most likely in extreme agony, possibly unable to hold up a book, while a TV hangs in a tantalizing manner above your head. Want to turn it on to relieve some of the boredom and possibly to distract from the pain? Well, it’s gonna cost ya!). The patients might tell others a boat with a bomb just sailed into Indian Point, but as I’ve always suspected, and Bob’s experience has confirmed, no one pays attention to patients.

So, here’s my plea. I’m isolated. If something significant happens between 7:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on a weekday, will someone please email me to let me know (especially if I need to evacuate my home and head to safety)?