I imagine them in my head because it makes it easier, to build them into flesh and bone. Real people with real lives and real things to do, everyday soldiers in a digital war. In one of their hands is an unpinned grenade and in the other are lanyards, car keys, dog leashes, spatulas, checkbooks and hairbrushes. Minutiae of living. Mundane little marches to battle. Makes them more than words on a screen. It doesn’t make it make sense, but it makes it real, and if it’s real you can feel it, and if you can feel it you can forgive it, and if you can forgive it you can forget it. I’m not sure that any of this works.
They blend together but I remember the first. It was under the first column I ever wrote in a real newspaper. I was in college. The column was about how American universities have incentive to keep students in school longer than four years, because then schools make more money. It was benign and straightforward. At the bottom of the page, a stranger called me a lazy idiot. I thought he must be a nice man who had misunderstood. That was more than ten years ago.
There have been many since. I like to pull them off the page and give them names. I like to think of them out in the world, doing something real, and boring and human. Taking their dog to the park. Swearing when the oil light comes on in their car. Cooking pancakes for dinner because they’re too tired for anything else. Communion in imagined camaraderie, dried up wells of hate.They don’t mean it. I’ll introduce you.