NOTE ON THE COMMENTS: Turns out Granny actually did live next door to a crazed murderer! Read her story
So you know how whenever a serial killer’s arrested, they invariably quote some neighbour who swears Joe was a really nice guy. Well, nowadays we see the same theme emerge whenever some suicide bomber offs himself and a few dozen others on the London subway, or whenever someone’s arrested on a security certificate in, say, Ottawa. Friends, neighbours, family members all line up to say there was absolutely no way Jamal could have been involved in such a thing. (See “angry’s” last comment about how some of the Burka-clad women related to the current suspects were “shocked that their sons and husbands were involved.”)
The problem is for every friend/neighbour/family member who swears Joe or Jamal was just a regular guy, there’s almost always a more clued-in friend/neighbour/ /family member who realized Joe/Jamal was up to no good. You know, the mom who told her kids never to go near Joe’s house or the uncle who took the parents aside and pointed out it was maybe just a little strange that his nephew had all of a sudden taken to wearing traditional Bedouin dress and watching Al Jazeera 24/7.
Now, Tearfree likes to think that she’s one of the people who would be astute enough to figure it out if the guy next door was dangerous or if her daughter had anorexia (How do you miss that one?) or if her friend joined a terrorist cell, but what to say about all those people who simply don’t get it?
Maybe they need to start reading some some fiction about the attractions of life as a terrorist. Tearfree recommends American Pastoral by Philip Roth and for what motivates a radical, try The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez.
8 comments:
I hope this doesn't sound racist, but I will look twice if I ever see a young Muslim man buying a large bag of fertilizer at the local Home Depot. I am not saying, Angry, that I will then go out and vandalize a mosque or shout racial slurs at the kind and hilarious Pakistani man who owns the corner store in my neighbourhood. But let's put it this way -- if they'd arrested a bunch of blue-eyed blonde Swedes plotting to use ammonium nitrate to blow up the CN Tower/the Peace Tower, I would then be weirded out the next time I saw some tow-headed fellow named Bjorn carting off many bags of fertilizer at Canadian Tire.
I then would probably steer clear of IKEA, thinking, goddamn you, Swedes, you've had a good life here and made money off your poorly made furniture -- why would you plot to kill us? Which would be a drag, because, you know -- cheap and lovely housewares. Wouldn't miss the bunk beds, however.
Sometimes a sixth sense with respect to danger kicks in.
murder
Granny,
I"m a little unclear about what's going on based on your links. did you actually live next door to a murderer?
Oh yes. I may still be able to find some newspaper links. I thought I had a link in the blog but if I did it was on a second post.
My friend L. googled me after I mentioned where I live. That's what she found.
I summarized the story accurately enough.
Merced, CA maybe 5 years ago.
I think what I was saying is that sometimes we sense something hinky without knowing exactly what.
And I kept the girls in the front yard, not the back even though it is a shared courtyard.
I'll see if I can find an old link.
This was written by a pro handgun person but it's reasonable accurate. Dawn Carter is my best friend here; Ray Adams is my husband. It was in 2000 so I'd have to dig into newspaper archives for anything else.
link
What a story!
It's exaggerated there for effect, of course and it's a dramatization. The man had his own agenda and no one can possibly know what went on in that house. The newpapers were more straightforward.
And it wasn't a pitchfork, it was some sort of spading implement. The papers probably decided pitchfork would be easier for their urban readers to identify.
Very "In Cold Blood"
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