I Just Want to Feel Safe Again

     When I was in elementary school in the 1950s, (yes, I’m that old) we did Duck and Cover drills. These drills were designed to keep us safe in case a foreign enemy dropped a nuclear bomb on the United States. The drills were silly, really. We were told to drop to the floor and hunker under our desks, as if somehow that desk could keep us from becoming an ash outline on the floor. I guess the important part was we believed it would work. It was only later when I saw pictures of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that I realized nothing short of a bomb shelter might keep you alive. But I do remember being afraid of this danger from the sky. I was scared to walk the block home to and from school. I didn’t feel safe.

     There were other times too. When I moved to Colorado in 1972. I worked in downtown Denver and there was a huge problem with transients. That’s what the homeless were called back then, transients, bums. I had to walk several blocks to my car from the bank where I worked, at night, alone. I’d never seen drunk (mostly men) people lying around on sidewalks, passed out. Or sometimes they would accost me to beg for money. I learned to walk very fast. I didn’t breathe until I was inside my car headed for my apartment. I even started riding the bus but even the bus stopped several blocks away from my apartment building. So, I had to walk, at night, in the dark, several blocks, past dark alleys when Denver had one of the highest incidents of rape in the country. Again, I walked very fast. I didn’t feel safe.

     Another time I remember a trip back to Denver from home. It was snowing lightly when I left to come back but not enough to make me stay an extra day. I figured I could outrun the storm. Half way to Denver the roads started getting very icy. My car began to fishtail and I slid off the road into a ditch. Just as I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, a very, very nice guy and his girlfriend, who saw me go off the road, stopped. (No cellphone.) While his girlfriend drove their car, he got me out of the ditch then drove my car to Cheyenne. They both suggested I stay in Cheyenne until the storm died down but because I was afraid of losing my job, I drove the rest of the way to Denver in a blinding snow storm. By the time I got to (what was then) Mile High Stadium I had about a 4 inch swipe of clear windshield to see through. I pulled off and cleared the rest of the windshield so I could see to drive to my apartment. I’d left home at 10:00 a.m. and got back to my apartment in Denver at 11:00 p.m. Aside from my slide into the ditch and a quick refueling stop, I was on the highway for about 10 hours. The trip usually took 5 hours. I didn’t feel safe.

     I’ve been through the shootings at Columbine High School, the Aurora theater shootings, 9/11 and everything since. Shootings at malls, nightclubs, more schools than I can count, places where we pray and where ordinary people conduct business. I live in a state where three police officers were shot and killed in the line of duty within a two month period of time.  I don’t feel safe.

     I’m not comfortable being out after dark or in shopping malls. I’m distressed over allowing mentally unstable individuals the ability to buy a gun. I worry about stuff that wouldn’t have garnered two minutes of my time ten years ago; global warming, identity theft, opioid addiction, sink-holes, losing my social security and Medicare. I have nightmares about another 9/11 type attack, getting a major illness and losing my home trying to pay the medical bills. I’m not unique. There are hundreds of thousands, millions, just like me. Struggling every day, just trying to find a way to feel safe.