A friend of mine who lives at the beach was once rousted out of bed at dawn by the beeping sound of a van in reverse.
He peered out of his bedroom window and watched as a team of guys gathered around a bright orange van. “DANGER! HAZMAT CREW!” was stenciled on the side of the van, and the group was busily donning white spacesuit-like outfits, complete with huge white gloves and enclosed plastic helmets.
He went outside to investigate, which is where he and I part company. I would have rolled over and gone back to sleep. Whatever it was that was going on, would be my thinking, would probably still be going at 9 a.m.
Outside, he saw that the house next door was surrounded by bright yellow tape, emblazoned with the words, “DANGER! HAZARDOUS MATERIALS! DO NOT CROSS!”
“Um, what’s going on?” he asked one of the guys. “I live next door. Is everything OK?”
The guy in charge shook his head inside his scary helmet. “Nothing to worry about,” he said through the microphone/speaker attachment. “Everything’s normal. No need for alarm.”
These are words that ring false when spoken by a guy in a plastic suit who is next to a van with flashing lights and filtered electronically through a helmet — once again proving that when it comes to spoken communication, delivery really matters.
My friend stood shivering in the still-dark morning, watching as the team frog-walked into the house next door like astronauts. “Go back inside, sir,” one of them commanded electronically because, of course, there was nothing to worry about. Everything was normal — no need for alarm.
A few moments later, they reemerged carrying — by tongs — a large metal crate, which they carefully placed in the van. “Nothing to worry about,” the leader said through his helmet speaker. “Just routine. Please go into your home now.”
My friend did go inside. And for a few minutes, at least, he worried about it. What was in the box? Who called the hazmat squad? Was he in any danger of radioactive poisoning or toxic gas ingestion or something? He sat on his sofa and thought about it for a while, but by then, the sun had come up. The children needed to get to school, the dog needed to be walked, and he had an early appointment at the office, so the whole thing just slipped his mind.
He never found out what the hazmat team had carried out by the tongs. He didn’t know his neighbor — Malibu is a distinctly unneighborly neighborhood — and a week or so later, the house was put on the market, sold, then sold again. It is now owned by a Chinese internet billionaire, who isn’t currently allowed to leave China, according to a rumor.
So, all in all, the place still is kind of toxic.
But what was amazing, to me at least, was this: A week later, he had forgotten about the incident.
“Hey, what was the deal with that hazmat crew outside of your neighbor’s house?” I asked him one day at lunch.
He looked puzzled, and then, it came back to him.
“Oh, yeah. That. You know,” he replied with a shrug. “I forgot all about that. I wonder what that stuff was that they had to carry out with tongs.”
My friend told me that a big reason he didn’t think about it again was that he didn’t want to know, couldn’t do anything about it, and might as well just get on with his life and wait for something bad to happen, which it probably wouldn’t anyway.
It’s amazing how many odd and alarming things can seem normal as long as there are enough people wearing some kind of uniform to say, “This is normal. Relax. There’s nothing to be worried about.”
Hazmat teams next door with tongs and a glowing box. Airport security officers wearing disquieting rubber gloves touching you all over without making eye contact or taking naked pictures of you — totally normal. Lining up outside the UPS store because there are already three people inside. Removing your mask for 3 seconds to take a sip of your coffee and feeling the heat of every pair of eyes bearing down on you. Or, for that matter, wearing a mask in the first place.
Totally normal, relax, go back inside, nothing to be worried about.
It seems odd for a moment, and then, the morning starts up. We forget all about it and get on with our day, and the next time the hazmat team shows up on our street, we don’t even get out of bed.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
