The Detectives Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot

I've been watching two hours of the Italian channel four or five days a week for - what? - two months now, maybe three? After not even trying to speak Italian since 1983, I have the nerve to be annoyed when I catch the words and can't figure out what's going on, even with the oh so hinty moving pictures. Why? Because I think I should understand Italian. Why? Because once upon a time I put some effort into it for a number of years. Why? Because I have always thought I should understand Italian. You're right. My logic is dizzying. I can report progress: the words are now clear enough to my ear that I know what to look up in the dictionary.

That should be a reason for optimism. I should be thrilled I remember anything, after twenty-three years. It's not rational, but I expect more from myself than this. I expect lightning bolts to shoot from my fingertips, too, so what I think of Me borders on the cartoony. It's this Should thing that gets me into trouble, tugging me this way and that. Should isn't real. Should is judgmental. Should sits on the porch and watches who comes and goes. I threw out Should years ago, but he came creeping back.

Friday night, at a dinner party, the war bubbled up through conversation. Sometimes, when you have eye contact, you forget who else is nearby. After an excited sentence or two, our host stopped speaking. She looked around the table anxiously and said words that shocked me.

Host: Are we safe here?

I nodded. Conversation continued. The woman at the end of the table escaped the war in Rwanda and struggled for four years to get her family out of refugee camps. They'd walked to Kenya. If she went back, as a former government worker, she'd be executed. It was as if the dam burst and water found its level. The person next to me remained silent but everyone else gushed and burbled. I said there was only one course of action: all the troops should be withdrawn, we should stop pissing off Iran because our military has recycled soldiers past the point of all reason and is failing in not one but two wars and cannot sustain a third effort, and the whole administration should be shipped steerage to the Hague for war crimes trials. I thought that might be a bit radical for the assembled but nobody stopped smiling. One person hooked a thumb in the direction of her husband.

Wife: That's what HE thinks!

Maybe I shouldn't have said that - but I did. Maybe the 70% of us who've been too polite to talk about our opposition to the war should set aside manners and be quiet no more.

Should. Should?