It Defies Comment
Early spring is when middle and junior high schools take their trips to the nation's capital, where they get to marinate in endless monuments, museums, and history. More importantly, they get to spend a week at the dawn of their puberty with their friends and peers--far, far away from their parents and guardians. That being the case, it is very difficult to concentrate on the aforementioned monuments, museums, and history (unless you're me, an unabashed bookworm).
This week, my wife and I have welcomed into our home a special guest who has never been to DC. Yesterday, the guest and I chose to visit the Holocaust Museum, because it is kind of a duty. Bracing ourselves, we stepped into an elevator with a retired white couple and about a half-dozen of the blond-haired, blue-eyed, chattering schoolgirls from one of these field trips. The chattering ceased immediately when one of the octogenarian hosts held open the door and described the layout of the building.
Quiet is the absence of noise, but silence is a heavy, almost tangible blanket that smothers all sound. It was silence that overcame the inside of that elevator when the host mentioned, almost casually, that she had lived in one of the concentration camps about which we would soon be learning. It's one thing to read about and see pictures, especially with the History Channel and Academy Awards going out almost yearly to movies on the subject; but it's quite another to hear it in the quiver of a voice and see it in the lines of a matronly face and you can reach out and touch.
The moment, though, was very nearly shattered by the African American teenagers waiting in line for the next elevator, shouting something inconsequential into their cell phones. The host shushed them with the most deafening whisper before concluding and leaving us to our self-guided tour.
The older gentleman shook his head and muttered, "Those people have no respect."
And the door slid closed.