Bad Dogs Have More Fun: Selected Writings on Family, Animals, and Life From the Philadelphia Inquirer by John Grogan

Author:John Grogan [Grogan, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Essays, Nonfiction, Humor & Satire, Pets, Family & Relationships, Dogs
ISBN: 978-1593154905
Publisher: Vanguard Press
Published: 2007-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

What had taken us weeks to work through after Challenger took us less than two minutes. Not another word was spoken about it for the rest of the morning. Speakers got up and sat down, presentations were made, handouts distributed, questions asked.

It was as if Columbia had not really been lost. As if what had been described to us was just a scene from a reality TV show. Real but not really real.

Our ambivalence surprised but did not shock me. In the wake of 9/11, the explosion of a space shuttle by no nefarious design was tragic, certainly, but somehow less so than what we all now know is possible.

I’m ashamed to admit that almost instantly I worked the numbers. Seven lost. Seven lives, seven of our best and brightest. Heroes, gone in a flash. Horribly sad. And yet.

Seven is not 700. Or 7,000.

And yet.

A fatal mishap in the netherworld of Earth’s outer atmosphere in a pursuit as inherently risky as space travel is not terrorists striking ordinary Americans as they go about the routines of their daily lives.

A Scale of Tragedy

And yet.

Death by nature’s fury is not death by the hand of human hatred.

On the post–9/11 national-tragedy scale, this one, mercifully, fell somewhere less than a 10. That is not to minimize the loss, searing and profound, but rather to acknowledge the context.

We have changed. Our nation has changed. We are tougher now, harder. Our hearts are no less big, but the innocence—that optimism and blind belief in goodness we Americans are so famous for—is tempered.

We have been reminded—in horrible ways—that this world is a dangerous, unpredictable place, and death can come at anytime to anyone.

On Saturday night as I watched the Columbia tragedy unfold on CNN, an announcer broke in with yet another reminder of life’s fragility: Seven high school students, children not unlike yours or mine, were buried by an avalanche in British Columbia. Seven more bright stars extinguished.

I reeled back. Sucked in a sharp, short breath. Blinked hard. Then moved on.

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