Learnings from Tucson

There’s something particularly creepy about watching the national news and seeing the realizing you’re across the street from the scene of the story. I’m in a motel, and before going to sleep last night I turned on the TV to flip channels. Nearly every news outlet was running the YouTube footage attributed to Jared Loughner, which was filmed at the Pima Community College main campus. I am directly across the street from that campus.

Loughner, in case you’ve been living in a hole for the past week, is a very disturbed young man who tried to assassinate Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, killing 6 people and wounding 14 others. The whole ordeal is extra-special creepy to me, because I not only lived in Tucson for 12 years, but lived and worked in the area where it happened. When she was running for office, I had many debates with people regarding the relative merits of Giffords versus her opponent. I’d met her predecessor, Jim Kolbe, who was instrumental in me being in Tucson in the first place; he’d orchestrated the sweetheart deal that convinced my corporate overlords to relocate from New Mexico to Arizona. I shopped in the Safeway where the shooting took place, and frequented other businesses in that shopping center. One of my favorite restaurants in Tucson is right across the street.

More disturbing, though, is that I’m convinced I’ve had run-ins with Loughner himself. I worked at the big-box bookstore attached to the mall, and every Friday night obnoxious teenagers would overrun the place. The mall closed at 9, the bookstore at 11, so massive swarms of dozens, even hundreds, of teens would hang out in the store. There was vandalism, there were fights, there was general mayhem. Once we ended up in the middle of a Homeland Security drill when a kid put a dry ice/pop bottle bomb in a trash can. The sheriff’s department would come and help clear them out. I threw a lot of unruly kids out. When I saw Loughner’s name it sounded familiar, and when I saw his picture (the earlier ones, not the psychotic, bald, red g-strong ones) he looked really, really familiar. I swear I evicted him from the store for being a jackass at some point.

Flipping channels didn’t ease my mind any, and in fact helped reinforce my belief that the world is going insane. I now know who Snooki is, and can put a face to the name. Frightening. I could feel my brain cells dying after about 5 minutes, and couldn’t take any more after 10. I saw a big of Teen Moms 2, where the teen girl’s mother served papers for custody of her grandbaby, and the teen mom started screaming that grandma was an unfit parent because she got knocked up at 16, and repeatedly threatened to punch grandma in the head. Ah, yes, that’ll help you win that custody battle. Threaten violence while the cameras are rolling and showing this on national television. Let’s gloss over the fact that by holding your mother responsible for you getting pregnant at 16 you’re kind of saying she should be in charge of the baby, and by not taking any responsibility for the child’s conception you’re honestly not making a case that you can be responsible for the child. That the rest of the episode that I saw depicts teen mom running around with her friends while wearing slutty clothes as grandma handles the baby… gah, civilization has been reduced to that. Head. Desk.

I’ve been saying that I don’t own a TV but I still watch DVDs and streaming media, so it’s the same thing. It’s not. Oh sweet dear “Bob”, it’s not. No commercials, no mind-numbing commercials. No mindless random channel surfing, with dozens of channels full of “reality” programming and infomercials. No, having to select your own programming by clicking a link or inserting a disc is not the same was watching television. And I feel blessed for that.

There’s no pithy wrap-up to this. I came to Tucson to see some friends, play some games, and have some fun. I did. That I came following a tragedy was coincidence. It didn’t lessen the fun or ruin the weekend, because life will out, life goes on. I don’t need television to tell me that the world is a scary place; I know that from being out from in front of the television and living in it. It’s how we choose to handle the world, they ways we choose to fall to it or rise above and make the best of it, that matters.