devarim

My wake-up this morning? Hearing on the radio about "explosions" in London. You know, kind of like when I woke up to the radio news on September 11, 2001, and a panicked woman stading on a rooftop in downtown Manhattan was describing how a plane (only one, then) had just flown into one of the Twin Towers. Before any commentators that morning breathed the word "terrorism," my father was on the phone insisting that it was an attack.

This morning, I didn't need him to plant the idea in my head. Before I even heard about the bus bombs - when all I knew about was "an explosion in the London Underground" - I of course "knew" what had happened. The only thing left to do was to send my thoughts to the victims.

And to start speculating, of course, because that's what we do. Was it because of the Olympics? Nah, too hard to have planned five possible attacks and then execute one with only a day's notice. G8? More likely. Or was it the start of a worldwide coordinated attack? Would D.C., New York, Boston be hit a few hours later? By the time we were in the car on our way to work, Governor Romney had raised our threat level and there was talk of heightened security on the MBTA. Which is rather dumb, if you ask me...they're not going to pull the same type of attack that many hours later; it's going to be something unexpected.

Like the bus bombs an hour after the Underground explosions. Just when everyone had been evacuated. Just when everyone was finding alternate means of transportation (like, y'know, the bus). Just when they were starting to think it was all over.