September
3, 2002 9:00 a.m. Defiant
Normality
The
only way to live.
Inches:
And how are you this morning, Sir? Churchill: All right, I think. Thank you for asking. Missing
her, of course, but that's to be expected. No point in dwelling on her
absence. We must KBO. Inches: Yes, Sir. Keep buggering on at all times, Sir. Churchill: KBO. That's the order of the day.
— from Hugh Whitemore's screenplay for the BBC/HBO production of
The Gathering Storm
y
daily newspaper, the New York Post, gave over its Letters page
on Saturday to readers' suggestions and declarations about the right way
to spend this coming September 11 — the most appropriate way for
ordinary Americans to commemorate last year's attacks. One reader thought
Mayor Bloomberg should close city schools for the day. Another plans to
treat his family, friends, and colleagues with extra consideration. A
third hoped for the TV networks to show the horrible images from last
year over again: "Our blood must boil as it did on 9/11 last year,
so none of us ever forgets." Police Officer Frank Irizarry will don
his uniform and go to work: he's on duty that day and will "have
to mourn the day after." The father of a World Trade Center victim,
in the most moving contribution, says that he and his wife plan to visit
Ground Zero for the first time. One Edward Every declares that he will
"live the day as any other." Meanwhile, our president has designated
September a "month of service," in which we should all go and
volunteer for something.
I'm with Mr. Every
on this. "Defiant normality" is the watchword — or, as
Winston Churchill used to say: "KBO." It is of course a cliché
to say that "the terrorists have won" when we allow our ordinary
lives to be derailed by them and their foul deeds. Like most clichés,
though, it is essentially true; and it is doubly true if we put our ordinary
lives on hold for the mere anniversary of those deeds. Screw Osama
bin Laden and his little band of nutsos. We have killed a good number
of them, and we'll kill more — of them, and their friends, and their
sponsors, and their financiers, and their armorers, and as many of their
supporters, fans and admirers as it pleases us to direct our attention
to — as and when we get round to it; in the meantime, we'll keep
buggering on.
I am a big fan of
normality.
I remember reading, at an early age, Jules Verne's Around the World
in Eighty Days. The hero of that book is Mr. Phileas Fogg, a Frenchman's
notion of an English Gentleman: taciturn, solitary, obsessively punctual,
living his life according to a strict routine — in short, anal-retentive
in the extreme. At the beginning of the book he has just dismissed his
valet: "because that luckless youth had brought him shaving-water
at eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit instead of eighty-six." Mr. Fogg's
life gets turned upside-down of course, and at the end of the book he
has acquired a wife, and his inflexible routines are all shot to hell.
It was a great story (and still is: Verne was a grand-master at storytelling),
but I couldn't help thinking, putting it down, that I had liked Mr. Fogg
better the way he was at the beginning. "Luckless youth?" Sounded
to me like sheer incompetence. I would have fired the dolt, too. Conservatives
are born, not made, you see.
I don't think KBO
is an especially English sentiment, but there's no doubt the English are,
or at any rate once were, exceptionally good at it. WE NEVER CLOSED was
the proud sign in the windows of London stores during and after the Blitz.
That spirit was still alive at least as late as 1983. On December 17 of
that year, the fearless warriors of the IRA let off a car bomb in the
street outside Harrod's department store in London. Nine people were killed,
four policemen and five people doing their Christmas shopping. One of
those people was a young woman who was blown to bits by the bomb —
literally to bits: one of her arms was found on a nearby roof. Very shortly
afterwards — my memory may be at fault, but I believe it was actually
the next day; it was certainly while the mess was being cleaned up —
that young woman's father made a point of going to do his Christmas
shopping at Harrod's. Dennis Thatcher, the prime minister's husband, went
with him for company.
At the risk of being
accused of trespassing in Oprah territory, I can personally testify that
the affirmation of routine, of normality, is psychologically as well as
socially beneficial. There was a point in my own life when I was wretchedly
unhappy. I moped, I drank, I sank deep into self-pity — the lowest
and least attractive of all states of mind. The consequence of all that
was, that I ran out of money. Dragging myself from my den of misery, I
got a job, the least mentally demanding job I could think of. It involved
a full nine-hour day of washing dishes, scrubbing food-preparation surfaces
with green plastic scouring pads — I got through four or five of
those suckers a day — and mopping floors with a boot-rotting mixture
of ammonia and cleaning fluid, all at minimum wage. The boss of the establishment
had served in one of the more rigorous branches of the military, and considered
he was being cheated if his employees stood idle for more than fifteen
seconds. If there was no work to be done, he found some. That boss had
a genius for finding you stuff to do.
I wasn't exactly
a star employee. My attitude was not all it might have been. As a matter
of fact I eventually got fired. (For taking a day off when they were short-handed
— I tell you, that guy ran a tight ship.) I am sure the management
had forgotten my name before I made it to the corner of the street; yet,
irrationally perhaps, I have always felt very grateful to that place.
The sheer forced routine of getting myself down there by seven-thirty
every morning, carrying out my assigned tasks, not being able to smoke
except at prescribed times, and not being able to drink at all until evening,
straightened me out. I got my head together, as the saying went: attained
a clear view of things, or at any rate a much clearer view than I'd had,
kicked the stupid drink problem, saved a little money, found a decent
place to live, stopped feeling sorry for myself, and got my sense of humor
back. (The greatest mystery of this world, to my way of thinking, is how
people get through life with no sense of humor at all, as so uncountably
many seem to do.) By the time they fired me, I was already thinking: "What
am I doing here?" I rested up for a week, then put on a suit
and tie and got a job that matched my qualifications. Got back to normal.
So let it be with
our national traumas. When somebody smites us, let's smite them back,
hip and thigh, and ten times harder. For those of us not directly engaged
in the smiting, let normality rule. KBO, USA!
—
Mr.
Derbyshire is also an NR contributing editor.
Remember These Derb Lines? — Pop Culture Is Filth — Let America's enemies crow today: Tomorrow they will tremble, and weep. — I don't see how you can ever have enough nukes
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y
daily newspaper, the New York Post, gave over its Letters page
on Saturday to readers' suggestions and declarations about the right way
to spend this coming September 11 — the most appropriate way for
ordinary Americans to commemorate last year's attacks. One reader thought
Mayor Bloomberg should close city schools for the day. Another plans to
treat his family, friends, and colleagues with extra consideration. A
third hoped for the TV networks to show the horrible images from last
year over again: "Our blood must boil as it did on 9/11 last year,
so none of us ever forgets." Police Officer Frank Irizarry will don
his uniform and go to work: he's on duty that day and will "have
to mourn the day after." The father of a World Trade Center victim,
in the most moving contribution, says that he and his wife plan to visit
Ground Zero for the first time. One Edward Every declares that he will
"live the day as any other." Meanwhile, our president has designated
September a "month of service," in which we should all go and
volunteer for something.
