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by Beth Teitell
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
At Eastern Junior High School, my alma mater, the girls used to complain that the guys sent ``mixed messages.''
You'd hear through the grapevine that Tommy or Billy ``liked you,'' but then you'd see him in the hallway, between gym and home ec, and he'd brush by without so much as a nod.
Now it's the government that's sending mixed messages: Be careful, we're told, but resume normal activity.
Osama bin Laden has reduced the American lifestyle to the title of a hackneyed musical revue: ``I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.''
Or, put another way: ``You're Safe, Everything's OK, Watch Out!''
Last Thursday night, in his primetime press conference, the Comforter-in-Chief told us: ``If you find a person that you've never seen before getting in a crop-duster that doesn't belong to you, report it.
``If you see suspicious people lurking around petrochemical plants, report it to law enforcement.''
That's practical advice for those who live in crop-duster country, or near petrochemical plants, but where are the instructions for Bostonians?
What, exactly, constitutes suspicious behavior? Passing up a parking spot in the North End on a Saturday night? Giving another driver frontsies? Paying full retail?
I don't want to be a snitch, officer, but I think I saw her handing the last 75% off Famous Maker Bag to another shopper at Filene's Basement.
Remember how easy it used to be to be careful in Boston? Sure there were bad guys around, people with middle names like ``the Rifleman'' and ``the Animal,'' but as long as you didn't (try to) rat Whitey out to the FBI, or make the mistake of being a young attractive female who wanted out of her relationship with Stephen Flemmi, they pretty much left you alone.
But now what? Life has become a big guessing game: Where or what are they going to strike next? Infect next? The Park Street T station? The crullers at Dunkin' Donuts?
Suddenly, everyone's an FBI profiler. ``I'm not afraid to fly,'' one person told me, ``because they've already done the plane thing. They wouldn't do it again.''
``I would go to New York City,'' she added, ``but not to the `heartland.' I think they might try to spook us by striking there next.''
Another woman has deduced that banks - specifically her local branch - might be next. ``They want to make us nervous about money,'' she explained.
In the beginning (was it fewer than two weeks ago?) it was easy to write off the Florida anthrax cases as exactly the freaky kind of thing that would happen at the offices of a supermarket tabloid. But once they started hitting legitimate targets - The New York Times, for goodness sake! the Senate Democratic Leader's office - no one seemed safe.
But besides deciding not to open your mail, how do you go on full alert? Especially when the warnings we've gotten have been so general as to be almost useless?
As a people most used to protecting ourselves from computer viruses, how will we deal with Operation Enduring Jitters?