WEEKLY COLUMN:
JDM vs the WORLD

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FINE PRINT

Is it just me, or is the sky is falling?

For fear of sounding like Chicken Little, I’ll admit that the fire and brimstone aren’t yet plummeting to the Earth.  It’s no loss to come prepared, however, so I’ve got my umbrella handy just in case.

Considering some of the crazy things that have occurred lately, I would be only mildly surprised if the world did, indeed, come to an end. Not that I’m rooting for it, mind you, I just wouldn’t be all that startled.

Think about this. On Tuesday, May 15th, authorities in the Midwest had to chase down an unmanned locomotive.  A runaway freaking train! Does anybody realize how weird this is? Things like this just aren’t supposed to happen.

Or maybe they are. Maybe it’s not that this incident is all that bizarre. Maybe it’s just that there aren’t enough runaway trains in this world.

Emphasis on maybe.

On a more somber note, though, is the plethora of school shootings that have occurred in the last few years. These really get me. There’s something tragic, and rather not poetic, about kids and killings going hand-in-hand.

Take the most recent convicted young murder, Nathaniel Brazill.

When Barry Grunow, a father, husband and, by all accounts, a decent man, went to work on the last day of the 2000 school year, there was likely little chance he knew he wouldn’t be coming home. If he did, the odds are ever greater that he never would have seen his particular demise coming. Sadly, it came at the hands of a gun-toting student, Nathaniel Brazill, whom Grunow was purportedly quite fond of.

Scary, isn’t it, that Grunow and Brazill had nary an axe to grind between them?

This is just a classic example of the kind of death that doesn’t have to happen. What if Nathaniel had not pulled the trigger, or pointed the gun, or asked to speak to a girl in the classroom, or gone home and gotten the gun, or thrown a water balloon in the first place? Would any of this have happened? No on all points.

Scarier, even, is the way a minor misadventure can evolve into full-blown mishap.

Keep that in mind the next time you throw a water balloon, point a blinding red laser lights or forget to signal when changing lanes. One man’s obnoxious behavior can sometimes equate to another man’s life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Nathaniel, who’ll soon be serving 25 years in prison--if not more--for not simply thinking things through.

Then there’s Robert Downey Jr., further proof that the planets are far out of alignment.

And they wonder if the media has any ill affects on children.

What’s really gotten on my nerves lately has been the issue of Timothy McVeigh. No matter which way you slice it, there’s simply no chance that the outcome of this dilemma is going to please everybody. It just can’t.

My problem isn’t with McVeigh himself--although I could obviously do without him--but rather the way in which he is dominating news headlines right now. Here we have 168 bystanding souls wiped from existence in one fell swoop, yet the convicted, confessed mass murderer responsible for their deaths stands to stave off his own on account ofÉa lousy collection of missing papers?

The man’s guilty, for crying out loud. There isn’t a missing FBI document in the world that’s going to change the fact that he blew the Alfred P. Murrah building to smithereens some six years ago. Had we only given him his death by lethal injection one stinking week earlier than scheduled, this point would be moot.

Or would it?

The current McVeigh situation is further proof that the death penalty is not something that this country needs to be messing with.  Does this man deserve to die for his crimes? You bet he does. But are we, as fellow, fallible human beings, really the ones who ought to be giving him this sort of sentencing? I don’t think so.

What if we had taken him out a week earlier than the planned May 16th execution? Suppose the FBI documents surfaced after the fact? Boy, I can’t think of any better way to make the man the martyr that several people have suggested he might become. Yet, if recent developments are any indication, perhaps the government is every bit as unreliable as McVeigh himself has been insisting.

I digress. I would hate to sound as if I’m on his side.

As it stands now, this case is going back to court, where there is a very real possibility that the initial verdict against this man might be overturned. Who knows, maybe even in favor of a mistrial? The last thing this country needs is the confessed killer of a whopping 168 people walking the streets on account of the tiniest little slip-up.

It used to be in life that there were two guarantees. One was death, the other taxes. If the Oklahoma City bomber manages to wriggle his way out of death, well, at least we still have taxes.

Then again, they’ve got to kill him. How else can they hope to tax his estate? Ah, forget it, they’ll find ways. They always do.

I’m not sure if I even have a point anymore. Now, I’m just mad because I wrote all these thoughts down. That’s pretty sad, in and of itself, but I’ll leave you to dwell on what I’ve said. Just keep one thing in mind: if the sky does fall, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

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