Saturday, October 26, 2002

Safety, Again

Well, I was in Silver Spring, MD during the recent sniper episode and arrived home alive. So did my husband. So did all of our friends.

Or, as the button many of us bought and wore (thanks, Lee and Nancy!) said:

    No stupid sniper is going to ruin my convention.

And he didn't. Capclave was probably slightly less well-attended than it might have been, but most of the people I wanted to see braved the news reports and went to Silver Spring anyway.

I don't want to be too blase about danger, but the overreaction to living is getting tiresome. Some of my friends have become very fatalistic ("If there's a bullet out there with your name on it, that's it"). I'm not. Increasingly, I feel like I'm living with the religion of statistics. I'm more likely to die of a stroke in my 70s than of a bullet or terrorist action in my 40s.