A TIME FOR TEARS

The clue Wanda Coleman lacks in “A Loner’s Leap” (Three on the Town, June 5) is not the “race, size or hair color” of the suicide victim but rather why people commit suicide.

We don’t owe people who take their own lives anything after the fact. By then it’s too late. We already know that suicide is usually a messy, cowardly way to exit life at the expense of others. But if viewing “mounds of flesh, some flattened in a trail of skid marks” only incites Coleman to write a column about the ennui of society and banal parallels to rock songs, then she doesn’t get it either.

Next time, while everyone else is looking at their watches and diving for the nearest off-ramp, Wanda, pull over to the side of the road and cry your eyes out instead. It isn’t really a “metropolis gone mad.” It is an enormous collection of individuals who just don’t get it--and don’t seem to care.

GRETCHEN KOEHLER

Irvine