Go Ahead and Make Our Day
“If he had made one move toward the driver I would have stabbed him in the throat with my knitting scissors,” said a usually winsome and sprightly young friend of mine, who had just gotten off a bus from New York City to Boston.
An “Arab-looking” man had sat next to her in the front row, right across from the driver, even though the bus had been more than half empty and he could have had a row to himself farther back. That aroused her suspicion. Then the man took out a book, which appeared to be printed in Arabic, and began reading. Strike two. Then he began checking his cell phone obsessively and continued to do so throughout the five-hour ride, as if he were waiting for a call that never came. That sealed it for her. She was on to him.
“I made sure he saw me put the scissors in my front pocket where I could reach them,” she said.
Thankfully, my friend didn’t have to use her self-styled bayonet, but she had been quite prepared to do so if necessary. She had even forgone using the bathroom for the whole trip, full bladder and all, just in case the guy really had planned on trying something.
That’s the all too familiar and yet startling part. She had even worked out the scenario in her head and related it to me with alarming sang-froid.
“He was wearing a leather jacket, so I knew I couldn’t have stabbed him in the back. It wouldn’t have gone through. So I decided on the jugular instead.”
Somehow, I don’t think this course of action, much less its meticulous premeditation, would have occurred to her before Sept. 11. Then she was just a gal on the go. Now she’s Rambolina. And she’s not alone. I, too, like many of us, have had savior fantasies.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, my friend rode the bus Saturday, the same day Richard C. Reid--or whatever his real name is--allegedly tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami. It was diverted to Boston after watchful passengers and flight attendants tackled Reid and subdued him with belts, shoelaces, earphone wires and whatever else would hold a knot. Suddenly, with the flick of a match, “Airplane” turned into “Con Air” and a bunch of tourists on American Airlines turned into a Delta Force. With frequent fliers like these, who needs sky marshals?
Airport personnel may not be ready to anticipate the next wave of security breaches, willing to scrutinize every odd duck or able to thwart another terrorist strike, but we paranoid day-trippers and accidental tourists sure are. The nation is going die-hard with a vengeance. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Most of us know that we’re not really safer now than we were before. Homeland security can only do so much. But rather than cowering in fear or denial as many of us did a few short months ago, we’ve moved on to the next stage of grief. Anger is everywhere, as is the determination to act (violently, if need be) in self-defense.
The Bush administration has put us on high alert three times in the past four months. That used to paralyze us. Not anymore. Now we’ve gone them one better and become a gang of crypto-vigilantes on a mission.
Doubtless, more terror is coming our way, and our enemies will try to wreak their havoc in every imaginable way. The authorities cannot wholly prevent this. But it seems that good old Yankee self-reliance and a dash of familiar Hollywood bravado--the kind that comes from having seen too many movies--is bringing out the true grit in all of us, and that’s not a bad thing.
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Norah Vincent is a freelance journalist who lives in New York.