I was sleeping soundly like many of us do during the work week. I was young and living far from home when I awoke to the sounds of a siren and a voice from a loudspeaker. As my consciousness returned, I quickly recalled that I was not in southern California living in the college dorms at UCSB anymore. No, I slowly remembered that I had taken a break from college to learn more about the real world and travel. I had joined the Army, attended training in Texas and Indiana, and was now living in Germany.
The voice and sirens that I heard were coming from a military police vehicle and I was being told to report to work. The voice also said that it was not known if this was a training exercise or a real world alert. That is how I found out that the United States had retaliated on Libya in 1986 for, among other things, the bombing of a disco in Berlin that was a favorite hang out for soldiers like me.
This time around, my military service days are memories, which have been replaced by parenthood, teaching, and working on the east coast. Though I found out about our latest engagement with Libya in a more mundane way, via the Internet, it reminded me of the very real threats that exist outside of our work-a-day lives. Threats that many of us, even in a post 9/11 world, still appear to take for granted.
How this is going to end is anyone’s guess, though many, as always, are making predictions, but the truth is they do not know. Meanwhile, most of us wake up to alarm clocks and start our days and only think about these things when we hear about them on the news or when someone brings it up in conversation.
As for me, well I am at a point in life when I am just content to be waking up to a new day, though with far less a sense of certainty about what the future will bring than I had 25 years ago…
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