In the week after 9.11, they began again; vivid dreams about an impending nuclear holocaust. The dreams had stopped sometime in my early 20s, after plaguing me from the time I was old enough to understand what those words meant. I won't bore you with the details of the "reinitiation" dream, but suffice it to say that even five years later I can recall every detail of the dream as if it were a life experience.
I put the resurgence down to the fact that I am admittedly neurotic with a tenacious imagination for all things therein. However, even I could never have predicted that the largest terror of my adolescence was not only going to move back into my psyche but also pick up pervading American culture where it had left off so many years ago. Apparently the writers of several new shows had some of the same apocalyptic dreams I had, only they decided to sell their souls to the devil to put it on tv.
The thing that surprises me about this is the fact that people my sisters' age (twelve years my junior) and younger never had to grow up worrying about this. I've asked two of the three of my sisters if they ever worried about a nuclear attack growing up—both said no. I vaguely remember seeing an article about the effect of the terrorist attacks on people their age and younger which did make mention of the fact that theirs were generations which had never had to contemplate living during a time where there wasn't mostly peace for the western world. It made me feel alternately jealous and infinitely sad for the potential loss of innocence for these people.
Until I realized that most of them haven't changed their way of viewing the world and that for many these tv shows are just entertainment. Even the recent nuclear testing in North Korea is nothing for serious alarm. You know, because it happened half a world away, which makes it someone else's problem.
Me? I'm still dreaming, only now in addition to the mushroom cloud on the horizon, I'm surrounded by crowds of people who, in the face of the blast, have placid looks of acceptance on their faces.
I can't tell which of these things horrifies me more.
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