Cultivating Paranoia

I'M BECOMING PARANOID. It isn't starting, its been happening a long time, probably since the late nineteen fifties, when I was but a tot, and frightened, like many of my generation, by the wicked witch's flying monkeys. You just didn't get the feeling that one of them would sit on your lap. What if you had raised one of them from infancy, gently...? The Cuban Missile Crisis occured in the fisrt semester of my second grade year. There is something about believing that a big bomb is gonna blow you up any second now that somehow, inexplicably, triggers a bit of paranoia. Oh, those halcyon days of grammar school, hiding under our desks, while imaginary communist fighters, bombers, and propaganda floated overhead! I think I liked the atom bomb drills most of all, better than the tornado drills, certainly better than the fire drills. There was simply something special about being beneath one's desk in third, fourth, fifth grade, particularly if Debbie was under hers, next to yours. we had fun, rehearsing for a nightmare that never came. Even at nine year old, I wondered how much protection my desk would afford, and I thought I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Those clover leaf anti Goldwater ads in the 1964 presidential campaign were soooo deliciously paranoid! Soon after we were reminded that any American president can be murdered at any time by anyone, the streest of America erupted with race rioting, and America went on the attack. The news was filled with burning cities at home and death overseas. What a fine time to grow up, and cultivate one's paranoia properly! Watergate destroyed our last vestige of faith in government, then, along came global warming, environmental destruction, women's rights, gay rights, more fear, more anger. Nine One One was one giant leap forward, paranoically. Likewise Columbine. Now we not only have proof of impending envionmental destruction, we have the constant threat of terroristic mass murder. It can happen at any moment, anywhere, or everywhere...of course, let's fact it. Nobody need be paranoid. Nobody need pay attention to the world, and its paranoia inducing madness. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it can help alleviate paranoia.