"Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?"

In the late 1950's I found myself in the emergency room of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital having hyper-ventilated on the way home from the beach. While the emergency room physician told me that I was the healthiest looking person he had ever seen in the emergency room, he suggested, "Norman, you need to learn to relax. You are quite obviously tense, and if you don't learn to relax you will keep hyper-ventilating." He could just as well have said to his patient (me), "Norman, you need to learn to have blue eyes, brown eyes won't do anymore." While I never did learn how to relax, I never again hyper-ventilated and sadly I still have brown eyes.

It's now thirty five years later and since September 11 I have listened to both elected and appointed officials of our government, while appearing on TV sending us contradictory messages concerning our behavior. We are to go about our business every day (because the "evil doers" want to disrupt our lives). While at the same time we are constantly instructed to be careful, to be vigilant, and to report unusual activities and instructed to do a broad variety of things.

On September 21 I flew on American Airlines from Los Angeles connecting in New York to go to Paris. When I mentioned this trip to a friend she said, "Norman, don't go. A friend of mines cousin is with the FBI and she said there was going to be another series of hijackings on September 21, but if you do go be very careful." While connecting in New York it was refreshing to note that the security measures were as inept as ever, except that the security staff was busy running around making a huge commotion. While the Los Angeles system checked my boarding pass against my photo I.D. on several occasions I was not asked to identify myself in that way in New York, at any time.

In the last four or five weeks we have been subjected to reports of many threats from our own government officials, as well as countless rumors from our friends and associates. These included, "Don't go to the mall, don't go to Century City, don't go to theme parks..." and most recently courtesy of our governor, "Don't go near suspension bridges." That of course is in addition to the extremely scary admonition "Be very careful about your mail."

Anthrax is now living, eating, and having a generally great time in my psyche. I know that it is silly, but every time I open a letter I think, "Is this the one containing Anthrax?" Would any terrorist group clever enough to hijack four big jets simultaneously and destroy the World Trade Center and a big piece of the Pentagon, who are desirous of spreading Anthrax throughout our great nation, not have the experience and intellect of spreading Anthrax in non-descript letters originating purportedly from credit card companies, department stores, the Red-Cross etc.

I am absolutely sick and tired of being vigilant. I am similarly exhausted from being observant and careful and doing my own version of racial profiling. On the way back from Paris I was in the American Airlines Admirals club reading my newspaper while carefully observing a dark skinned and bearded man who was sitting perhaps twenty yards away from me who spent most of his time talking on the phone. He was obviously middle eastern and as a certified neurotic, I concluded that he was talking to his co-conspirators about hijacking the plane on which he and I were to travel. He had carry-on luggage and while I tried to be calm it was certainly a challenge for me. About thirty minutes before flight time I decided to board the plane and I walked past this middle eastern terrorist only to realize that he was a New York Jewish music executive that I had known since the early 60's, but had not seen in probably fifteen years.

Why would the FBI tell the citizens of the United States to be especially vigilant "in the next few days". If this is meant to help the public, I am undoubtedly missing something. Is it, on the other hand, information that is released to protect the FBI who can always say, if something does indeed happen, that they were alert and did in fact warn the American public.

A REMEDY

I believe that President Bush could make a speech on network TV as soon as possible, and he would say something like:

"My fellow Americans, we are fighting a war throughout the world against terrorism, and are doing everything within our power to bring those responsible for the terrorist activities on September 11 and the Anthrax attacks to justice. I speak to you today to inform you that despite the magnificent efforts of law enforcement agencies, that from time to time terrorist will unfortunately be successful in carrying out their evil activity. We will, as your government, notify you only when we have specific information concerning what we perceive to be specific attempts being mounted by these terrorist against the citizens of the United States. I have instructed members of this administration to discontinue issuing vague and non-specific information concerning possible terrorist activities.

Rest assured that we will continue to improve security on all transportation systems and increase our preparedness against biological and chemical attacks on our country. Our nation has great resolve and we will overcome this cowardly terrorist activity. I have instructed members of this administration and law enforcement as well as requested of congress and others, to reduce their appearances on TV and diminish their rhetoric about this activity when they do in fact appear on TV.

We will certainly "overcome" and may God bless the United States of America as well as everyone else."

As for myself, I commit that I will be on special alert while shopping at Gelsons, be on the look out at my local gas station, dry cleaner and hardware store, while attempting to relax and at the same time meditating as much as possible as I try to "...make my brown eyes blue."

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