When we Knew the World Was Going to End
Posted on April 4, 2007
When the national anthem began, we stood as one, hats flipped off of heads, hands over hearts, eyes on the field where the President stood, and we really listened to the words again, after years of ignoring them, sipping on our beers and sneaking looks down the tank tops of the underage girls two rows in front of us and whooping like idiots when the singer sang about bombs and death. We realized how sad the song is, how we’ve come to celebrate death and savagery wrapped in a cloak of godliness. And we shed a few tears—but only a few because the last few days had wrung us dry—when we asked ourselves the inevitable question: is this the same kind of song they sing before their soccer games or camel races or kabaddi or whatever they do over there? Then we remembered again. We were sure we would always remember.
The air was still thick with dust and days-old smoke, a mist washing over us, curling into our nostrils and diving into our lungs. It was relentless; no matter how hard we coughed or how often we blinked, it was still there, coming, coming, always marching toward us, and we couldn’t help but wonder what we’d just swallowed—was that just dust from a broken cinderblock that rested on our seats? Was that ash from a burning car that fell on our tongues as we breathed open-mouthed so as to avoid smelling the death in the air? Was that our fathers, brothers, sisters, neighbors dusting our hair and following us home? Read more
Filed Under TMC, Baseball, kabaddi, apocalyptic nonsense | Leave a Comment
