High Overhead

My mother had a very visceral reaction to the movie "Grand Canyon." Her youngest son had moved to Los Angeles, and the depictions of urban life in that movie gave her pause. In particular, there was a helicopter metaphor that ran through the film. The whirring sound of chopper blades announced potential chaos or doom in some form or another, not unlike Radar O'Reilly's clarion call: "Choppers!"
Back in the early nineties, there weren't very many helicopters buzzing overhead in Boulder, Colorado. Every so often, there would be a forest fire or a news channel that would bring one or two around, but only until the moment passed. They were far from ubiquitous. When I moved out to California myself, it took me a while to get used to that whirring sound. Morning, noon, and night. When things get really interesting, there can be four machines or more: TV, Police, Rescue. It's the way we respond.
Yesterday morning as I made my way to work, there was a lone helicopter hanging up in the sky. When they hold very still, I assume that there must be something wrong on the ground just below them. I tried to gauge from my angle just where they might be looking. Was it my neighborhood, or the one where I was headed? Before I could come up underneath, it had flown on, probably back to the airport. I didn't see any smoke or hear any sirens. There were no roadblocks. It must have been an opportunistic shot of morning traffic problems.
These days I tend to treat the sound of helicopters overhead like I do that of a car alarm going off. I don't run to the front porch to see if someone is breaking into the car down the street. I simply wait it out, assuming that some rumbling noise must have set the alarm off in the first place, and it will eventually shut itself off. Just like those helicopters. If I sit there long enough, they'll go away too. It's all part of life in the big city.