Breaking

 My son shared the story of his morning. He said he had, for a change, come wide awake at seven thirty and decided to go ahead with his day off. His assistant stage manager job has him adhering to a more comfortable night owl schedule for him, rousing by noon and facing the day. But on this past Tuesday, he was alert and ready to face the day.

As is his custom, he reached for his phone to make sure that no one had cancelled or scheduled anything while he slept. Was anyone reaching out to him overnight to enhance or distract? He found the headline: Brooklyn Subway Shooting. For several minutes he was treated to accounts, photos and videos of the horrific act of violence perpetrated on a Manhattan-bound N Train. Commuters pouring out of a smoke-filled car, most of them confused and terrified, some of them dropping to the platform, bleeding as those with their wits still about them clamored to assist. Only ten of those injured were shot, but the resulting chaos brought the number up to twenty. Witnesses described the thirty or more shots that rang out as the train approached the 36th Street station. 

And then the suspect disappeared. 

This was when my son decided to roll over and try to go back to sleep. Hit the snooze button. This was quite obviously the wrong side of the bed. It was not the way he had hoped to face the morning, with a mass shooting glaring back in his face. This was no day off.

His response reminded me of a scene from the 1987 Steve Martin film, Roxanne. Steve walks out of a café, stops and looks at the newspaper machine on the curb. Dropping a few coins in, he opens the door and pulls out the latest edition. After a moment of perusing the headlines, he lets out a shriek, shoves his hand back in his pocket to retrieve some more change, drops it into the machine, opens the door again and shoves the newspaper back inside. 

I suppose we could all use this presence of mind. What we don't open, or click on or endlessly doom-scroll over, won't hurt us. Not immediately, anyway. Hopefully after hitting the reset button, the day will begin with something less harsh, more inviting. Puppies rescuing ducks from a pond. Skittles has finally decided to go back to having their green candies be lime. 

Give us a break.