Strange Days 7/21/2024

By: Jennifer Richardson Holt

Things lately have been very strange.  I don’t know if the peculiarities are worth writing about, but I’ve never let less than thrilling subject matter stop me before so why would I start now?  Have you ever had a flurry of things just suddenly go on in your life that were terribly out of the ordinary, so it gave you an almost eerie feeling?  I don’t think eerie is really the most appropriate term to use but I can’t think of one better. If something comes to me as I write this, I’ll certainly let you know.  I will tell you about the odd life and times of me.        

Interestingly enough, most of all I have to tell you about happened on one day.  It actually all was in the latter part of one day.  It began all pretty nondescript. It was the weekend, so we were all home.  My husband, my daughter and I were all doing random things. We’d been out swimming in the pool a bit earlier and were all relaxing in the house.  It was a classic summer afternoon. There were a lot of things going on but nothing very quickly or frantically. Leisure was the name of the game that day.  The television was on, but nobody was really watching.  I can’t remember what exactly I was doing.  I might have been working on cooking a meal. I might have been cleaning up after a meal. It was such an unremarkable day that I can’t even remember what I was up to.

For some reason, I glanced up at the TV. It was showing a political rally. Yes, I know.  Please spare me the commentary as I have social media and am bombarded with plenty as are we all. But on the screen the podium was empty. The announcers weren’t really saying anything. There seemed to be a pile of people behind the podium. Some people in the audience were down low. Some were just standing with terribly confused looks on their faces.  I hadn’t been particularly vested in what was going on but now I could tell, while I couldn’t really tell what was going on, I knew it was not what was supposed to be going on. I could, however, see what it looked like and that was shocking. It looked like the man behind the podium had been shot. Surely, I didn’t see that. There is no way I just witnessed a former president be shot. I have lived through some history, but to see it right in my living room was not what I expected on an average mid-July Saturday.

My husband came in and I told him what seemed to have happened. The TV announcers had begun to sputter and describe “an incident” that had occurred and the tones in their voices sounded as confused as the looks on everyone’s faces. My husband insisted on rewinding the live stream to see the events as they unfolded. I called my mother to tell her what I had seen, what little I understood of it. She put it on her tv and began to give me a play by play of current events. I had a hard time making her understand I was no longer seeing live events as my husband was using the power of rewind to get his own opinions.

The day progressed and all the news and even things that weren’t the news became solely focused the event that I accidentally saw. A former president had been shot, slightly injured but narrowly missing a fatal wound. I felt so strange to have seen an actual assassination attempt as it happened just as matter of coincidence. It was while I was pondering the fact that this was a historic event when my dog outside decided to have one of her classic barking fits. This isn’t abnormal but I decided to go check and make sure everything was alright and ensure it was in fact only her being a weirdo.

My concern grew when I saw her barking focused to one area. That has not proven as of late to be a particularly good sign.  She was pointing her ferocious noise at the foot of a giant cedar in our back yard.  I’ve seen her react fervently to a leaf before, so I was holding on to hope that was all this was. She seemed to be adamantly barking at a pile of leaves at the base of the tree.  I had almost relaxed until I noticed just how distinctly patterned that pile of leaves was.  That is when I realized it was not in fact leaves. I scooped up the loudmouth canine and ran into the house to report the situation to my husband. There was a rather sizeable copperhead coiled up at the base of that tree. Enough of a viper to do any of us significant damage. This is the second such venomous beast in as many months in my back yard. This is not a development that makes one comfortable.  Such things only added to the concerning nature of the day.

Later that same day, I was casually strolling the cacophony that is social media. I see my local, hometown, grocery store had a shooting in the parking lot. No. This is not ok. This is a tiny town with a tiny grocery store that is known far a wide for small but quality. Apparently some extra special so and so felt the need to carry a domestic dispute into the parking lot of our beloved rural grocer.  No. It has been a day full of danger and strangeness and I am not willing to cope with my hometown having this type of thing going on. True, it was probably a one-off random nut, but still, not ok. Yet more adding to the day of the out of the ordinary in the most disconcerting way possible.

I can’t say after recounting all these events to you that I have an overarching theme. All that comes to mind is that there is a great deal of evil and danger in this world. And when it comes to seemingly overwhelming darkness, it appears you can find it everywhere.  While this is not a heartwarming thought, I do find a great deal of solace in knowing that not once, ever, in the history of mankind, has darkness ever put out light.  And it only takes the tiniest speck of light to dispel the darkness. So even if I just go to the slightest effort and find the tiniest sparks of hope and goodness, the battle is already won. And that is enough to combat even the strangest of days.