After reading a newspaper in the mall, rather than toss it away, I offer it to a woman standing near a kiosk. She tells me she is allergic to newspapers. “I know what you mean,” I say, thinking she’s implying that reading about too much crime and scandal has a detrimental effect on her. But no. She explains that once she comes near to newspapers she literally begins to sneeze ... and that even if papers didn’t have that effect on her she still wouldn’t go near them.
Days later, I notice a pile of daily newspapers in a restaurant. The word “Hell” screams out in big red letters from the newspaper on top. The waitress who has been attending to me wonders aloud why good news can’t go on the front and crime at the back. As she goes on to talk about how desensitised the nation has become to the onslaught of “bad news” and gory details, I flip the page and we see an image of a man’s dead body. We flip back to the front and see a photograph of charred human remains.
The next day, as I sit thinking, I wonder what my headline for the day would be if my life were a newspaper. “I went to TTSPCA to adopt a puppy,” is the first event that comes to mind, void of sensationalism and bacchanal—how many would rush to buy that issue?