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Badge of Courage | Sep 24 2001

I’m on the subway now, heading to a friend’s dinner party. I’m feeling apprehensive about this dinner party because of what people might say, or rather because of how I will feel if people say what I expect them to say. I have imagined a scene in which I “get into it” with someone I don’t know and stupidly say what I really think, whereupon I “get into it” with several other people, friends this time, whereupon more bad things happen that I have not yet bothered to imagine. Fortunately, none of this is likely to occur, in part because I’m not one to “get into it” with people, but it’s interesting that it concerns me so.

Earlier today Rachel and I took her nieces, ages two and half and nearly five, to the Children’s Museum in Manhattan. The girls have been staying with their parents and infant brother in a midtown hotel while waiting to return to their Battery Park apartment, which was evacuated on the day of the attack and remains off-limits. The whole family has been stressed – shuttling from one place to another, scrambling to buy replacement clothes, dealing with the emotional fall-out, etc. – so Rachel and I offered to entertain the girls for a few hours and give their parents a breather.

The museum was fun. We sat in a room packed with kids and listened to a hyper-enthusiastic three-person group perform upbeat songs about spaghetti and dinosaurs. Then we indulged in a succesion of arts & crafts projects, all of which involved glue in various forms and brightly-colored bits of paper and fabric and plastic. Can’t complain, really, and the girls were precious.

Well, I can complain, because one of the projects involved the production of a “badge of courage” for a local police officer or firefighter. Don’t get me wrong: the fact that over three hundred and fifty police officers and firefighters died on the 11th is unspeakably tragic and horrific. This said, I found the “badge of courage” idea offensive, seeing it as the indoctrination of sentiment, and a particularly superficial sentiment at that.

Not that police officers and firefighters lack courage. In fact a few of the former have courageously beaten the shit out of some of my closest friends. (Okay, that was sarcastic. Without question, all this flag-waving and hero-making and heartstring-pulling is starting to wear on me.)

Back in the “badge of courage” room, a thirtyish father sat at the same table as us, making about the nicest badge you can imagine, with evenly drawn red and white stripes and lots of little silver stars and the words THANK YOU written across the top with what I took to be his own personal blue marker. Perhaps coincidentally, several similar badges were prominently displayed in the middle of room, hanging on a string strung in front of a sign that said THANK YOU in big letters.

The girls sat there blithely glueing things to other things. The oldest, Sydney, announced that her badge was for her mother, so her sister Hannah announced that hers was for her father. Then each requested another piece of circular paper so that they could make one for the other parent. When the badges were done, Rachel and I punched holes in each and tied blue or red string through. The girls had us attach them to their wrists, so that they could wear them like bracelets. As we were leaving, one of the museum people noticed the bracelets and asked Sydney if she wanted her badges hung up with the others. She declined, saying that this one was for her mother and this one for her father.

In the cab on the way back, Sydney correctly identified various New York landmarks on the map screwed to the back of the seat in front of her—the Statue of Liberty, LaGuardia Airport, the Empire State Building. Then she put her finger on the World Trade Center and said, “These are the buildings that crashed.”

Sydney was at kindergarden when the planes hit, just a few blocks from the towers. When she pointed at them on the map, I thought of something she told Rachel about that day: “That was my worst day of kindergarden ever” (it was her fourth). I wanted to ask her what happened to make it so bad, only I wasn’t sure if this was something you talked about with other people’s kids. Probably it wasn’t, I decided, so I didn’t.

I am tempted to say something about kids, something redeeming, but will resist the temptation. I’m not sure what to say and would like to avoid any last-minute heartstring-pulling. I’m feeling at a loss right now, and angry, and that’s about the sum of it.

No, wait, here’s one more thing: I can’t remember what the Cowardly Lion got. The Tin Man got a heart-shaped watch and the Scarecrow (I was about to write “Straw Man”) got a diploma, but what did the Cowardly Lion get? For the life me, I cannot remember. What do you give a coward to convince him he’s courageous?

I went online and looked it up. The Cowardly Lion got a medal; a very large gold medal in the shape of a cross with a red and white stripped piece of fabric on the end and a blue band that reads COURAGE.