The New Hotness

My aversion to tragedy

By Chhun Sun
The Collegian

Everywhere I go, I see it. I hear it, too. And each time it scares me. I’m not talking about a ghost here.

As much as I hate to say this, I don’t want to see it anymore. But it’s a cloak of sadness that hovers above me like a dark cloud. It’s in the newspapers and broadcast news and on radio shows. You name the medium and tragedy finds its way home.

Anybody can tell you about Hurricane Katrina and the ripple effect it has had across the country. That’s enough reason for me to ignore it the best that I can.

I’m not insensitive, or heartless, or merely unaffected because the hurricane didn’t affect me directly. Actually, the impact of the hurricane is overwhelming.

That’s why distractions are a must. I listen to music until my ears are numb. I drive and let the road take me to wherever it wants to take me. I talk to my oldest nephew about trying out for his high school varsity basketball team. I talk to my 15-year-old niece and enjoy hearing about why she chooses not to date. “Boys my age are immature,” she says.

In a way, I was never trained how to deal with natural disasters, whether directly or indirectly. But who has?

In 1989, my family and I were living in San Francisco. One day, the infamous Loma Prieta earthquake hit, shaking both the ground and confidence I had in living there. I was slow to find safety. Then my mother pulled me away from my oversized boom box, where I was listening to the latest Bobby Brown tape and forced me to stand next to her under a door frame.

In the same apartment, while I was sitting on the toilet seat, I had to run away with my underwear wrapped around my ankles when the bathtub from the apartment above me made its fall toward me, almost killing me. Especially then, at age 8, I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t run to my mother’s arms. Instead, I was looking for a working toilet.

Ever since, I’ve had the ability to mentally block out tragic things, my way of not letting a disaster directly affect me.

I once worked at a bookstore with someone who couldn’t get enough of gossip magazines, especially the ones that had Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston on their covers. This was during a time when the Indian Ocean tsunami was the big news.

“I look at these magazines,” the co-worker said, “and this is my reality.”

It’s not like we don’t care. It’s just that if you consume too much tragedy, it’ll fill you up and then you’ll really have to find that working toilet.

Chhun Sun is a senior majoring in Mass Communication and Journalism. E-mail this columnist at [email protected]. The New Hotness is a featured column that runs every Friday in The Collegian.