View From the Bushes

Well, I was driving up to Ogden yesterday and I heard a news report that a small plane had crashed. Furthermore, they reported that of the four people in the plane, the pilot, Vaughn Kinder and his wife had survived, but were in serious condition. Well, I bike and work with a guy named Vaughn Kinder and I thought he had told me about taking flying lessons, so I figured it must be him. When I got to my parents, I immediately got on the internet to see if it was, in fact, him. The first news story I found spelled the name "Von." For some reason that was enough to put my mind at ease and assure me that it was someone else, because newspapers would never misspell something, right?

Well, as it turns out, they did, and it was my co-worker who was in the crash, along with his wife, whom I had also met. But worse than all of that was the fact that one of the passengers was the husband of another co-worker. It's difficult in a situation like this to have any idea what to say. All of your cleverness and wit, all your friendliness and cheer, and all of your smiles and laughter suddenly seem hollow, misplaced and callous.

In short there is nothing to say, but it's helpful to have a reminder that all of those little news stories, like a small plane crashing in the Utah Desert, and stories that never make the national news and disappear from the local news after 24 hours, that all of these stories involve actual people, even if you've never met them, because one of these days you will have met them and one of these days it will be you.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross