AAARRRANNGGE

RED ALERT! RED ALERT! The Homeland Security Advisory System is under attack!... by our own government? Looks like the Obama administration is getting rid of the color-coded terrorist warning system. Its termination is especially sad for me because, back at its inception, I was one of its biggest, most vocal proponents.

My advocacy started on a lark. My friend had bought some fabric to sew her own dress to wear to her West African Dance class and then wanted to find a use for the leftover scrap so that it wouldn't go to waste. After that last sentence, I suppose it goes without saying that I attended a hippy-dippy liberal arts college. To help her out, I agreed to find a use for the orange fabric; since at the time our government had us under an orange warning, I hung up the swatch to advise my peers accordingly.

Apparently, we've always been on heightened alert. Not once in the past ten years has the terror alert color dipped below yellow, meaning that not once has it been all right for you to feel safe. I did my best to contribute to the paranoia by sometimes taking the fabric off the wall and wrapping it around my head. From there, I'd run around the campus screaming "ORANGE!" Usually, I said it like I were a pirate, so it'd come out "ARRRRANNGE!" If anyone were to ask what I was up to, I'd inform them to be on the look out for terrorists - you know, characters even more suspicious than myself.

I could be really fucking weird back then. ("Back then?" calls the chorus. Shut up.) But at least I was contributing to a lot of people's safety... even if I had to literally freak them out to do so. I would totally make a great government employee.