Washington ? If this is true, if these are the snipers, then at least we can breathe again.

It’s a terrible thing to contemplate, of course, that among us are people who crouch and wait for somebody to shoot at. It’s a terrible thing that so many were hit and so many were killed. And a terrible thing that so many more were scared.

But if it is over, then at least we can breathe again. And we can go outside again.

We were locked inside for too long, metaphorically and literally. Our kids were literally locked inside their schools. No outdoor gym classes. No outdoor recess. No gathering outside the school before and after class. No practices after school. No football or soccer games. We were all prisoners of these snipers, trapped indoors, moving warily from one holding cell to another.

It’s going to feel so great to go outside again. Maybe to jog a little. Or toss a football around. Or simply walk down the street without looking into every parked car or behind every tree to see if the devil lurks there.

Every night they put the profilers and the psychologists on TV. The profilers warned us to be on the lookout for a young, white male working alone. And the psychologists told us not to be afraid, and to tell our children not to be afraid. Don’t be afraid? Are you kidding me?

Of course we were afraid. We had every reason to be afraid. There were killers out there.

Show me a psychologist in the Washington area who wasn’t afraid, I’ll show you someone who shouldn’t have a license.

The simple acts we take for granted every day of our lives made us anxious. Like filling our gastanks.

After people started getting shot at shopping centers we started shopping differently. We bought less stuff so we wouldn’t have as many packages to carry out to the car, and we could quickly jump into the car and not make as inviting a target. We started walking differently in shopping centers too; we zig-zagged so we’d be harder to aim at.

You probably noticed the traffic got worse. It’s because more people drove to work; they didn’t want to wait in the open at the bus stop especially after that bus driver got shot.

I changed the way I walked my dog. I stayed off the larger streets the main avenues a shooter could more easily use as a route of escape. I walked on the small streets, and tried to hurry the dog along if she sniffed too long under a streetlight.

Normally playing golf is an escape from anxiety for me. But there are hundreds of places on a golf course where a person can hide. And every foursome I played in, every time we hit the ball into the woods, we made dark jokes (and half-believed them) about the possibility of finding the sniper in there.

I bring up golf because my kid plays, and a few of his high school matches were cancelled or postponed. Same for other sports.

Now that we’re going back outside again I hope the kids get their seasons back. I hope the school administrators appreciate this unique and terrible circumstance that forced everybody inside and I trust they’re smart enough and care enough about the students to extend the fall sports season to accomodate all the games that were lost. They deserve it.