No, wait. Better yet, forget imagining that you're a trucker. Just imagine whatever you think would be the the best thing a trucker might do. Now, any smart trucker is just going to go about his business and mourn the loss of life in a quiet way; he's not going to memorialize 9/11, at least not externally. No, you gotta imagine what a misguided trucker who left a few brain cells right next to the ephedrine on the bedside stand at Motel 6 might do.
So, if you're imagining a red, white, and blue 18-wheeler with murals on all sides, emblazoned with a slogan that reinterprets or even reimspiritinates "Never forget!" and "Always Remember!" and leaves them in the rhetorical dust, you're on the right
track. Now, if there could be no greater trucker memorial than the one you're imagining, would it be only imaginary? Or would it be real? Or would it take the form of a miniature, radio-controlled semi sold at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop?Of course, a real memorial is greater than an imaginary one, so if this really is the trucker's memorial of which there is No Greater Trucker Memorial (NGTM), then the NGTM must necessarily be real. Think of it this way: if you can imagine the NGTM as existing only in your mind, but you can also imagine it existing for reals, the former is absurd because the latter is in fact greater by virtue of its existence. Indeed, the only thing even better than one NGTM is the form of the NGTM also being impressed on hundreds of RC trucks which can be purchased for the bargain price of $89.99 each.
And in truth, that is precisely the case. I had seen the RC trucks, and just as "the fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" I thought to myself, "This is so absurd it could not possibly exist in reality." How wrong both the fool and I were! It turns out that John Holmgren of Shafer, MN, has indeed created (or perhaps channeled) the NGTM, and here it is. The "Rolling Memorial." Check your local Love's or Iowa 80-affiliated truck stop for the RC version. Have you forgotten?
2 comments:
Hold on there, I think that you are stepping on shaky ground to just assume that these guys even stop to stay at a Motel 6....but I digress so quickly-
I have not forgotten. No one can forget with all of the attention that the media and people like this keep drawing us back to. I am also feeling like we, as people, really couldn't forget even if we wanted to. I mean, do we really need memorials and tributes, or even an unending middle-eastern war, to remind us of the potential of human evil and how it affects us all?
My question though is why the Twin Towers are the only current target for this? What about Pearl Harbour? I haven't seen any recent requests for tattoos on that one....or what about the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the Columbine shooting or the V-Tech Massacre? It seems like there is more attention put on this event that transpired because of outsiders than the other events that are sparked by the equally evil acts of those who have come from our own...but I don't have a t-shirt for any of those either.
They are all tragic, and at the risk of sounding cold hearted- we are right to mourn the events, but eventually we need to move on.
Unfortunately, my birthday is 9/11...no one will let me forget either event.
Maybe you should buy one of those RC trucks and take it out and play with it the week before your birthday every year. You know, just to send a message to your wife and kids. The ellipsis on the truck leave the question open-ended, after all.
"Have you forgotten...my birthday? Hmm?"
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