THEM

While eating lunch today, I turned on the TV to find yet another news story of surviving the pandemic. This time it was financial survival tips, so I quickly flipped over to a movie channel. There I encountered THEM. For you who are too young to remember in the late 50’s and early 60’s Hollywood tried to educate us about the effects of radiation from atomic weaponry and such. THEM was one of those efforts regarding the effects of radiation on ants. It turned them into super giant killers. I remember every Saturday morning getting up early to watch Sunrise Theater on WRAL which often featured these movies. It carried me back to fears I had when I was in the very impressible ages of 10 to 17. When I turned 18 there were a whole new set of fears. My fears centered around the bomb, threats from Russia, and many other things including segregation and such I just couldn’t understand. So deep seated were my fears that I never thought of living beyond 21. As I reached that milestone and more I never got over feeling how temporary life might be and developed a somewhat nihilistic attitude about any kind of planning for a future. Today I wonder if 10 year olds feel the same as I did in 1959. I wonder if the bombardment of media stories and news about our current situation is creating a sense of nihilism in them. I was lucky. Somehow I found a way to turn most of fears into glimmers of hope. That served me well through the assassinations, the riots, Vietnam, and all the other wars to come. It served me when I begin to watch friends die of another disease which many people called a just punishment. And know that many friends of mine now still harbor a sickness that may have been prevented and cured. “These are the times that try men’s souls…” were words written during another time about a different set of circumstances, yet they are strangely appropriate today. They remind us we have a soul to be tried and somehow find a glimmer of light in all that is dark. If you know a 10 year old who may be scared right now, tell them that a 71 year old man knows that fear and that it will be ok for them as it has been for him.