Over the Line

When I first got glasses at age 16, I rediscovered the world. Trees actually had leaves. Lawns revealed their individual blades of grass. Details that had been fuzzy became laser-sharp.

“Wow,” I wondered. “How long have I been missing all this?”

When I last got glasses about two months ago, I discovered … a line. Floating at the lower edge of my vision. Fuzzy and sharp were now a matter of range, position and minor frustration.

“Wow,” I wondered. “How long will I be fumbling with all this?”

Yes, I’ve officially entered Bifocal Country. And in the process, I’ve decided that Ben Franklin’s greatest achievement wasn’t his stove or his electrical experiments – it was his ability to juggle two visual frames of reference at once without going insane.

“WE, THE PEOPLE OF … Hold on, Madison, I have to re-angle this … the blasted paper’s too large to see all at once …”

Teaching my eyes when to dance over and under the line has not exactly been a graceful tango. But somewhere along the line (pardon the phrase), the music clicked. Reflexes adjusted. And that border between far-lenses and near-lenses that had been so annoying became … well, not exactly invisible. But normal, even sometimes forgettable.

That shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. People get used to anything if it goes on long enough. That’s helpful in a world of situations, from minor eye annoyances to surviving the London Blitz.

But often as not, it’s one of our major problems, too.

We have an ability to edit that would make Hollywood jealous. And boy, do we. Sometimes it’s just a failure to see the everyday with fresh eyes, mentally blurring out a house or tree we’ve walked past a thousand times before. More often, though, we remove the uncomfortable. Not consciously, but by letting it become “normal.”
It might be someone holding a cardboard sign on the side of the road. Or a school shooting headline. Or one more story about those still vulnerable to the virus and its latest mutations. Things that once might have been a punch to the heart – and now, for many, become a moment’s attention and a shake of the head if they’re acknowledged at all.

I know. We’ve all got to survive and find a way to keep going in an often broken world. But we also have to do it without becoming numb. Pain ignored is only pain deferred – it’s not a solution.

Anyone who’s done home repair knows this. It’s easy to ignore a minor drip, a bit of wear, one of the hundred small warning signs around the house that say “fix me.” It becomes background noise … until the day that all that missed maintenance adds up to big problems and bigger repair bills.

Or take our own bodies. The repeated ache that’s “probably no big deal,” the odd lump that “I should get checked out sometime.” We’re busy and everything basically works, right? Until one day it doesn’t, and something that could have been caught early has life-changing consequences.

A person. A home. A society. All need attention. Not obsession or frantic worry, but awareness. An ability to feel and notice pain and then address the cause.

It isn’t easy, Worthwhile things often aren’t. But if we can look beyond our own moment, we can see what needs doing. Maybe even see our way forward to something better.

It’s a matter of focus.

Because unlike bifocals, some lines shouldn’t be overlooked.

Well, Look at That

About 10 years ago, my boss took me to the emergency room. Nothing huge, just a bleeding chin that needed three stitches after my spur-of-the-moment attempt to make the Olympic parking-lot diving team. You know, the usual.

On his way back, he drove by an accident. He slowed down, as drivers do, and took a glance. So did another driver, one who found the accident much more fascinating than the road.

Boom.

And like that, my boss’s car had a keepsake.

We’ve all seen it. We all know it happens. And most of us shake our heads in disbelief – until we’re the ones going past the car crash or the house fire. All of a sudden, you just can’t look away. You have to see more.

You’ve joined the rubberneck brigade.

The word’s an interesting  one. “Rubbernecking” originally described the out-of-town tourist, the sort whose head swiveled at every building taller than two stories. Now it’s become the badge of the morbidly curious and the curse of the highway patrol; at least one study suggests that gaping at crashes is almost as likely to cause an accident as yapping on a cell phone.

And since the Big Flood, it’s become a pastime for some that’s second only to Broncomania.

You know what I’m talking about.

The driver who swings around abruptly on the highway, to get a better look at washed-out homes.

The passerby who has to climb over or cut through a snow fence, to see if the Greenway is really as damaged as the city says.

The folks who hike around barriers and across still-dangerous country to where people are rebuilding – not to offer any help, but just to see the sights.

At one story I covered, a frustrated Longmont Dam Road resident called it “disaster tourism.” Some of the things her neighbors wanted to call it couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper.

I call it heartless.

I recognize the irony of a reporter saying this. After all, part of my job is to go to places where the worst is happening and see it for myself. I’ve stood by families as their home burned to cinders. I’ve watched the water rise in neighborhoods and walked through mud-ruined trailers with their residents afterward. I’ve even seen emergency workers drape the sheet over drivers whose luck ran out one dangerous day.

It’s never comfortable. Any of it.

I draw lines, of course. I never get in the way of emergency workers. I try not to do anything stupidly dangerous. I approach victims carefully, trying to be a neighbor as much as a journalist. And if they want me out of their face and off their property, I respect that and go.

I’m not just there randomly. I’m doing a job. In a way, I’m there so 500 other “tourists” don’t have to be.

And always, always, I make myself remember these are people in pain. Not just fodder for a lookyloo.

Maybe I haven’t convinced you. That’s OK. Sometimes I don’t always convince myself, either. But one thing I am convinced of – that callous curiosity carries a price tag.

There isn’t a place for it. Not here. Not anywhere.

It’s natural to want to see what the flood did. (If it wasn’t, our paper would have just wasted a lot of time and money.) But safely. Humanely. Please.

If getting a closer look makes you do something dangerous, it’s not worth it.

If getting a closer look puts you in the way of people trying to help, it’s not worth it.

If getting a closer look means stepping on someone’s heart, it’s really not worth it.

Have a heart to go with those eyes. Remember that these are still our friends, our neighbors. Treat them with the love and respect they deserve.

Let’s have fewer rubber necks and more open arms.