For the second time in a month, someone told me the news and my gut reaction was "that can't be true!"  The first time it was on the fourth of July, when someone told me that a little girl had been eviscerated by the drain in the wading pool I had learned to swim in.  I thought "That can't be true!  Those are connected, you know."  Well, I was wrong and Abby Taylor was, indeed, seriously injured at MGC pool. 

I remember feeling like Aquagirl when I was three or four years old and I swam, underwater, the twelve foot length of that little pool for the first time.

My kids all learned to hold their breath in that pool.  Nothing on earth had ever seemed as safe and fun as that little pool.  No one will ever swim in it again.

And now, the Girl Who Lived is in our prayers every day.

Wednesday night, as Jay and I sat down to dinner, a friend called from St. Cloud.  He asked if Jay was home.  I said that he was, but we had just started dinner and could Jay call him back?

"Are you watching the news?" he asked me.  "The 35W bridge just fell into the Mississippi river."

"WHAT?" I yelled.  That can't possibly be true!

But of course, it was true.

For the second time in a month, Minneapolis made national headlines for something horrific.

Like everyone else in the metro area, we spent the next hour tracking down everyone in the family to make sure no one was on the bridge when it fell.  Considering the size of our family and the number of times we all cross that bridge, it seems like a miracle that none of us were on it.

But a lot of peope were.  And a lot of people who were on the bridge when it fell walked off of it!

This fact boggles my mind.  How could anyone have survived the fall, the crumpling concrete, the river below?  Yet the fact is that the vast majority of commuters unlucky enough to have been crossing the river at that moment were lucky enough to have survived it.  I don't know what to make of that.  Or of the magic schoolbus that landed upright, in one piece, the people inside it suffering no more than scrapes and bruises.

Looking at the wreckage of the highway in the river, knowing first hand how long and high that expanse was, I can't get over how few outright deaths there have been.  Fortunately, this happened within a stone's throw of two of the best trauma centers on earth, so any victims who can be saved, probably will be.  The thing is, when you see the crumpled steel and concrete laying in the river, it's hard to believe that there weren't hundreds of deaths at the scene.

After three hours of watching the coverage, I was very proud of the way the emergency personnel handled the situation and the citizens who volunteered to help.  I don't think this was in any way uniquely Minnesotan.  New Yorkers didn't exactly turn their backs on each other on 9/11.  I don't even think this was an American thing.  I prefer to believe that most people, given a chance to help in a situation like that, will do what they can.

I was not so impressed with the news people who were trying  hard to whip up hysteria; speculating on whether this was accident or terrorism.  Wasn't it bad enough at the moment without talking heads trying to scare the public shitless when there was no evidence yet that this was anything but a terrible accident? Sometimes I really despise everyone in the news business.

Eventually it was all too much.  I was having 9/11 flashbacks.  So I baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and watched the most frivolous movie I own; Down With Love.  After two hours of hot pink fluff and Ewan MacGregor, I was ready to go to sleep without the spectre of nightmare bridges falling on me.