Harboring Old Grudges, Brokering New Deals

I was already pissed off as I woke up this morning. Vicious shards of daylight came jagging through my window, hitting me in the face as I opened my eyes. I rose nauseated, with a dull ache in my back and a sharp headache. By mid-morning the pain in my temples was virtually audible, buzzing and crackling mercilessly into my ears. The day seemed to throb, alive with an infamy all its own, and I suffered an agony of shame and regret for merely existing, for simply being a human being on so wretched a day as today.

For lunch, I met my friend at the Bongo Burger. I was picking the mealy tomato slices out of my falafel and muttering about how I didn’t like the cashier’s face and how it’d be funny if the fry cook burned himself when my friend asked me why I was being such a dick. I said that I thought FDR had been right, that December 7th truly had been a day that has lived in infamy, and that the seventh had certainly always sucked in my personal experience. I acknowledged the possibility that Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech may have become some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy for me, but I also argued that other explanations, ones involving astrological and/or karmic principles, could account for why December 7th had always been such a rotten day for me for as far back as I could remember. My friend told me that it wasn’t the anniversary of Pearl Harbor that lived in infamy but, rather, only the day of the bombing itself. I asked how could a day that ended 68 years ago “live” in infamy – or, for that matter, in any other condition? How could that possibly make any sense? My friend said that she didn’t know but that FDR had specified in his speech that he was only talking about December 7th of the year 1941, that it was only that particular date, the day when Japanese forces actually carried out their treacherous attack, that would live in infamy.

After lunch, I wikipediaed it. My friend had been right: “…December 7th, 1941, a day that will….” I suddenly felt much better. My headache dissipated, and I immediately began to feel a lot more optimistic about both myself and others.