A Day in the Life of Chaos

When the plague descended on the world I felt it coming even before it was officially Obviously no social distancing called.  As I watched the red dots expand on the map across wide swaths of the world in my mind the pandemic was declared.  It took days before the press and government followed suit.  For the historians among us I knew what what was coming.   In my library there is a book called ‘A Nest of Corsairs.”  It is a brilliant account outlining the story of the Barbary pirates and the early elements of the Marine Corp.  This all occurs in the setting of North Africa and in my mind images of Lawrence of Arabia flourish.  Sand storms and never ending stretches of a lifeless world extending outward into infinity.  Swollen, cracked lips as men with their heads wrapped in cloth trudge across expanses of the world so vast they are seemingly impossible to comprehend.  There is a moment in the story when a consular officer describes his life locked away in an outpost of Ameri

As I grow older I tend to look back at the various stages or segments of my life and wonder which taught me the most.  Each had its moments.  Marriage taught me patience, fatherhood nurturing.  College taught me to be responsible and to take care of myself,  being a teenager taught me what it meant to become a man.  Despite all of these momentous stages one other stage stands out as the very foundation of who I am. Nothing is more impressionable, more formative, more developmental than the playground.  That small corner of a child's world was our zone.  It was our island in Lord of the Flies.  It was the place where children interacted with each other and the pecking order, the social hierarchy was established.  There were no parents, only an attendant and like a prison guard in a tower at the fictional Nazi camp Stalag 13, there was always moment when their back was turned or the spotlight didn't shine. Lake Otis Elementary school in Anchorage, Alaska was my proving ground