We should be better than this

Part of life growing up in a small town is boredom - or at least it was back in the Stone Ages when I was growing up. There was no cable tv, no video games (alright, we had Pong, but roughly how long before that gets tiresome?) and no internet. I discovered books as an escape at an early age. Lots of other people have a tendency to look for "interesting" or "exciting" things going on town.

There was an intersection not far from our house that was the scene of a bad accident roughly once a year. I'm not sure why, but it seems that it was easy to miss this one particular Stop sign. If we happened to be out in the yard, we could actually hear the impact and within a few minutes the police cars and fire trucks would scream by, inevitably trailed by a line of cars. Granted, some of these cars were volunteer firemen who had nobly dropped whatever was going on in their own lives at that moment to come to the aid of their neighbors in need. But plenty of them were lookie-loos chasing excitement. But we were not allowed to hop on our bikes and pedal the quarter-mile or so to the scene. Absolutely forbidden. My mother, normally enthusiastic about all aspects of small town life, ruled this one off limits. I will never forget her explanation for this edict: We don't gawk at other people's tragedy.

The unfairness of it burned my adolescent brain, until one summer when the victim at that intersection down the road was my own cousin. His injuries were serious but not life-threatening, but it horrified me to think that people stood around staring as he was loaded into the ambulance. A couple of years later, it was my own brother, though thankfully not at that same intersection. His injuries were much more serious. It still tortures me to this day to wonder if the last thing he saw as he was loaded into that ambulance that would not get him to the ER in time to save his life was a gaggle of morbidly curious strangers reveling in the the story they would get to tell their friends over a beer that night. If he had to die, it should have been surrounded by the people who loved him, shouldn't it? Certainly it changed my understanding of my mother's ruling. Suddenly I couldn't understand why anyone would even want to do that.

So don't ask me what I think about the latest antics of Charlie Sheen or Lindsay Lohan. I don't know and I don't want to know. I wasn't watching as Anna Nicole Smith or Britney Spears self-destructed, either. I don't read the articles and when the reports come on tv, I'm scrambling for the remote. I even change the radio station in the car. If you really feel a need to be "involved," offer a heartfelt silent prayer for them. Don't gawk at other people's tragedy. If you're not better than that, you should be.