As if we didn’t have enough to worry about!
America is a land of stressed-out worriers. We lose sleep over the latest epidemics and health scares, over diseases like SARS and bird flu, and over chemicals in our food and horsemeat in our tacos. We fret about gun-toting nuts charging into schools or gunning down innocent theatergoers and about rogue police officers on random killing sprees. We agonize about the prevalence of sexual predators and other sickos who might kidnap or molest our children. We brood about the bad economy, and whether we can keep our jobs, and whether the college graduates in our families will be able to even get a job in the first place.
Now, we have to worry about sinkholes, too. Will we be like poor Jeff Bush, sitting innocently in his bedroom near Tampa, Florida, when suddenly and without apparent warning a massive sinkhole opens beneath him, swallowing him whole and leaving not a trace behind? What can we trust, if not the seemingly solid ground beneath our feet? But even that may simply be shifting sands.
As if we didn’t have enough to worry about! I guess we’ll just need to live our lives without being consumed by the countless risks and dangers that could strike us down at any moment. Eat, drink, and be merry — for tomorrow we may sink.