Come On People – WAKE UP!!

In the wake of the Boston Marathon Bombing and now the 10 year Kidnapping case in Cleveland, it has become painfully obvious that we have turned into a society of disconnected individuals. Not to say that with all the distractions of a festive atmosphere at the marathon, should someone have noticed the 2 criminals at work, but what about the neighbors living next to these terrorists.  Building bombs in apartments while supposedly attending college on visa’s?  Nobody notices strange activity.  College age students apparently not working, yet driving very expensive vehicles?  Then you have the Cleveland situation.  Are you kidding me !!  Neighbors and even friends stopping by during the course of 10 YEARS, nobody noticing anything out of place, WHAT!!  If you looked carefully at the news video showing the home in question, the house to its right had all of its windows boarded up as well.  So let me get this straight, the neighbors say they never noticed anything, but at the same time, they have boarded up their windows ??  The only comment was that once in a while they would see a naked woman crawling around the backyard??!!??  Am I crazy.

Are we so consumed with retrieving our next text or posting our next ridiculous event on social media, that we can’t take a few moments to look around and see what the heck is going on.  I think back as a child growing up in a small community where we could go from school to home to work to play knowing that if we were out of sight of our parents, that our friends’ parents would keep a watchful eye.  That beyond that, teachers, police officers and residents of the town would help us in need and would make sure that we were safe at all times. 

This current state of “zombism” also finds its way into the working world.  We are now finding ourselves being waited on at the drive through coffee shop, at the retail outlets and even at the car repair shops, by workers who are totally distracted and out of touch with reality.  They are punching in the wrong keys on the cash register because their other hand is holding their IPhone, blackberry, or other fancy devise which is supposedly keeping them connected to the entire world while they can’t even make eye contact with the person standing in front of them.  What makes it worse, is that they have just totally screwed up your order, charge you a higher price than they should have, or forgot to fix something in your car that you had specifically mentioned to them when you first came in.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I love technology and use it every day.  BUT, I refuse to allow myself to become so insulated from the world around me, that I can’t tell you what’s going on.  For example, we have so many people texting and talking on phones while driving that they can’t even tell the police officer what color the car was that just ran the red light and hit a pedestrian, That person was probably texting too.

This has got to stop.  We need to regain control of ourselves and begin to get connected with each other and our surroundings.  Long before neighborhood watch was “invented”, my grandmother could tell you the comings and goings of their neighborhood.  Not only would a sick individual not being able to hold someone captive for 10 years, but they would have been lucky to have gone unnoticed for 10 hours. 

We all talk about the importance of Homeland Security.  “Wake up and smell the Coffee”  You and I are Homeland Security. 

BE HOMELAND SECURITY. 

Rob Bodoni

Tewksbury