Someone we don't know

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Nancy A. Knox

I clearly remember one day, early in my parenting adventure. I had left my then-only two children in the living room while I went into the yard to hang laundry. While clothespinning the family underwear, I heard a resounding crash. Thinking my dear children dead, I dropped what I was doing and ran back into the house. Once in the doorway, I saw the monolithic wood coffee table overturned, one leg broken off.

As I, in my most calm mother, voice exclaimed "What the hell!" a 4-year-old Kelly looked over at a 2-year-old Jens, then solemnly looked me in the eye to utter, "Somebody we don't know did this." From that day forward, someone we don't know became a permanent resident of my household.

It seems "Someone we don't know" resides in many places, along with his friend, "I'm not to blame." Last week, while reading the bone-chilling account of the young woman who had beaten her children into a near-vegetative state, I saw mention of both those entities.

Someone we don't know was mentioned by the father of the babies.

"I don't understand. This is wrong," he is quoted as saying.

Maybe someone should explain to this man that infants don't inflict brain-tearing, bone-crushing injuries upon themselves.

They are essentially immobile. They don't climb onto the roof and throw themselves off. If the mother had set them on fire would he have believed they spontaneously combusted?

"Honey, I was just starting dinner, I turned around and the baby was in flames."

Talk about a cooking accident.

Later in the article, social workers expressed concern over the fact that the abusive mother refused to get help for her bipolar disorder. Oh, she's bipolar. All is forgiven. Go home and have more babies.

Seriously, I can't think of a better reason to sterilize and/or lock her up permanently. But I am too harsh. She's not to blame. She's bipolar, you know.

It reminded me of a story in the news last year, where a man claiming to be "on drugs" lopped off his son's head, and threw it onto the Interstate from his car window. Funny, practically everyone I know has been "on drugs" at one time or another and no one I know has performed a decapitation.

Wait! Maybe we will all have flashbacks! Heads will roll.

It appears that intake of substances is a perfect excuse for criminal and non-criminal behavior. Alcohol is a great excuse, and you don't even have to sit in a room, darkened with tin-foiled windows, dealing with people whose last names you will never know, in order to procure it.

Go into that well-lit Circle K. Wave to the cop at the door. Congratulations. You have just bought a 12-pack of someone you don't know. Now feel free to cheat on your significant other. Wreck your car. Do things you will cringe over later. After all you aren't to blame. It was that demon rum. It was someone you don't know.

We have become a society convinced that if we think up a good enough excuse, we will be forgiven.

"It don't count when you're high," B.B. King laments in a blues song. We all seem to embrace that sentiment. Everything from Prozac to Twinkies has been blamed for irrational acts.

Whatever happened to taking responsibility for our actions? Have we really convinced ourselves that we are not to blame? Has it become that easy to carry around someone we don't know?

I recently heard news concerning an old acquaintance of mine. It appears that after already being charged with two DUIs, he felt it was a good idea to drive 80 miles per hour through Oro Valley, drunk off his ass, with an open bottle of Jack Daniel's and a shotgun shoved under his seat. He is now occupying a guest suite in Florence State Prison.

Not to fear though. He's not lonely. He has cellmates. There's Bubba and Maggot, and one more guy. I think his name is somebody we don't know.

Maybe relatives of concentration camp victims should stop crying for justice and compensation. After all, I hear the entire Nazi party was loaded to the gills on Schnapps AND suffering from Bratwurst poisoning. Besides, it wasn't their idea anyway. It was someone they didn't know.

Nancy Knox is a sociology and political science senior and can be reached via e-mail at Nancy.Knox@wildcat.arizona.edu. Her column, Processed Cheese Food, appears on alternate Wednesdays.