The Last Word On Nothing

Smokey Bear Celebrates 70th Birthday and Reminds Americans … “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires”                                 —  Ad Council press release, August 7, 2014

Why me? Why am I the only one who can prevent wildfires?

Forest fires were burden enough. I’ve never even lived near a forest. Yet all my life, there he’s been: “Only you….Only you….Only you.” When I watched those public service commercials as a child, I remember thinking, What’s wrong with my parents, raising someone with my powers in a big city like Chicago? I was Superboy in Smallville, only in reverse. Superboy was killing time until he was old enough to move to Metropolis; I was waiting to relocate to Yosemite. I had to ask myself: What if Superboy had “forgotten” he could stop a speeding locomotive before it reached the crossing where Ma and Pa Kent’s car had stalled? Couldn’t I forget to prevent myself from leaving the stove on and tossing a match through the kitchen window?

Yet even then, did I move to a forest? I’m almost ashamed to say I eventually used the insurance settlement to buy a co-op in Manhattan. Besides, there’s only so much one person can do, as my therapist has helped me understand, citing our own sessions. Yet every so often comes news like the recent widespread conflagrations in Washington and Oregon, and then I can’t help thinking, “It’s all my fault. If only I had—”

What? If only I had what, exactly? Somebody please tell me, because that bear sure won’t. I used to write him—“Smokey Bear, c/o The U.S. Forest Service,” careful not to provoke him with the technically incorrect “the” before his surname—and what was his response? Silence—except in 2001, when he broadened my jurisdiction to all wildfires. Lesson learned: no more letters.

I do what I can. My apartment is in one of several high-rises across from a bucolic city park, and I sometimes patrol the paths there, following evidence of smoke to its source. One night I traced a curiously sweet scent to a bunch of teenagers, and when I informed them that only I could confiscate their flammable materials, they informed me that only they could beat the living shit out of me, and ever since then I’ve been more inclined to think that preventing bucolic-city-park fires is what doormen are for.

That encounter, though, got me thinking. This approach—this whole prevention strategy—is reactive. It’s all about watching. It’s all about waiting. Maybe my therapist is right, and I’m unthinkingly repeating the unhealthy patterns that I’ve inherited. I remember sitting on my grandfather’s knee while he described the hardship of spending his adult life wondering why Uncle Sam wanted him. Or my own father’s ongoing agony that Hertz had elected to put him in the driver’s seat today. “Why me?” I recall him keening on many an occasion. “And today of all days”—though Mother and I privately agreed that some days he probably could have squeezed Hertz in, if he really wanted to.

Hertz eventually took the hint and changed marketing strategies. My experience with the Ad Council has not been as fortunate. So I’ve decided to be proactive, someone who understands that a forest that burns to the ground is a forest that isn’t going to burn again for a long, long, long time.

I haven’t yet followed up on this insight, of course, because I’ve never been west of the Mississippi. But I do keep a jar of gasoline, a rag, and a Zippo on my person at all times, just in case my path should ever cross you-know-who’s.