I realized on the way home from work today (left early, since it was dead and while I'm better than Wednesday, I still feel like crap) and saw the half-mast flag at the Dunstable Police Station that yesterday's shootout badly rattled me. You would think, being a state removed, it wouldn't hit so hard, but it did, and here's why.
Greenland is separated from Epping by Stratham. That's it. It's fifteen minutes from my parent's house, and from where I grew up. I've driven through it a hundred billion times in my life. I KNOW exactly what house that was. I went to school with Officer Kukesh. He was the year behind mine, and in a town of maybe 6,000 people, you know I knew who he was. He's friends with some of my friends. I didn't hear about this on the news, I heard about it from friends who still live in the area, one of whom had to detour on his way home last night, because he drives by there for work.
People laugh at NH, and small town folk in general, when we say "This sort of thing doesn't happen here", but it really doesn't. Or when it does, it's maybe once in a generation or more. People don't just get into huge gun-battles in places like that. That stuff happens in the cities far away, not in Greenland, for crying out loud. I mean, yeah, sure, you know academically that of course it can happen there, but on a visceral level you can't believe it. It's so far outside your realm of experience and world that you just can't parse it.
These are places I've walked alone in the middle of the night, and felt perfectly safe. Where my friends and I hung out and had secret bonfires in the woods. Places where the worst thing you had to deal with was your drunk neighbor swearing obscenities from the roof (or if you're me, that would be your slightly PTSD affected landlord...no, we don't know how he got onto the roof, but at least we were able to get him down without getting hurt), or the jackass who thought it was fun to beat up his wife...despicable, but not anything like a shootout the scale of last night.
My world view's a little shaken up right now. I'm sure it'll right itself eventually, but right now, the world is a little scarier that it was when I got up yesterday, because one of the safest places I know, isn't anymore.
Greenland is separated from Epping by Stratham. That's it. It's fifteen minutes from my parent's house, and from where I grew up. I've driven through it a hundred billion times in my life. I KNOW exactly what house that was. I went to school with Officer Kukesh. He was the year behind mine, and in a town of maybe 6,000 people, you know I knew who he was. He's friends with some of my friends. I didn't hear about this on the news, I heard about it from friends who still live in the area, one of whom had to detour on his way home last night, because he drives by there for work.
People laugh at NH, and small town folk in general, when we say "This sort of thing doesn't happen here", but it really doesn't. Or when it does, it's maybe once in a generation or more. People don't just get into huge gun-battles in places like that. That stuff happens in the cities far away, not in Greenland, for crying out loud. I mean, yeah, sure, you know academically that of course it can happen there, but on a visceral level you can't believe it. It's so far outside your realm of experience and world that you just can't parse it.
These are places I've walked alone in the middle of the night, and felt perfectly safe. Where my friends and I hung out and had secret bonfires in the woods. Places where the worst thing you had to deal with was your drunk neighbor swearing obscenities from the roof (or if you're me, that would be your slightly PTSD affected landlord...no, we don't know how he got onto the roof, but at least we were able to get him down without getting hurt), or the jackass who thought it was fun to beat up his wife...despicable, but not anything like a shootout the scale of last night.
My world view's a little shaken up right now. I'm sure it'll right itself eventually, but right now, the world is a little scarier that it was when I got up yesterday, because one of the safest places I know, isn't anymore.
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