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The deleted editorial

It is Monday night and I just finished my editorial. But now I am writing another. The first was a bit of a harangue about some of our young people and their behavior. I was fired up, an unhappy camper! How dare they and who raised them anyway and what are we going to do about such behavior? I told them precisely how the cow ate the cabbage.

And as I was adding my signature, just about every emergency vehicle in the city roared up Walnut Street, with red lights and sirens at full throttle. Our scanner spit and sputtered to life. A couple of familiar voices spoke of the location east of town, a dirt road with a low-water bridge, a car wreck, the Life Watch helicopter on the way, and the dreaded word, coroner.

There is that clutch in the throat, the lurch of the stomach, the mind-numbing questions . . . who would be out there? What could have happened?

It seems likely that they might be ours . . . why would strangers be on that road? The second thought is that it would be kids. Adults out there for a legitimate reason would know the terrain, wouldn't they? A gut-wrenching night for someone's family, that is certain. Every parent's nightmare.

So I have canned the original editorial. It will keep. I haven't changed my mind about the message, but this may not be the time to offer it. By tomorrow our community may have changed . . . once more. Or it may not have budged an inch . . . could be that the names will be as unknown as the listings in another city's telephone book.

None the less, sometimes it is better to just shut up and offer up a prayer. This would be one of those times.

— SUSAN MARSHALL

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