Katrina Wuz Here

The graffiti of passerbys can be found in every city and in every state. Scrolled on bridges and tunnels, on bathroom stalls and tree trunks. All messages left behind to tell us that-John loves Molly, Tina wuz here, and For a good time you can call......

Each doodle hopeful that the people who view it will read the mark they left.

This weekend my husband and I had dinner with his friends Billy and Rachel; a great couple he met at work. I liked them both instantly and devoured each of their life stories hungrily as we ate dinner. Rachel, although born in MN, believes herself to be a southern girl at heart and has a flare for healthy foods and forward answers. She's great. Billy is an ex-cage fighter and grew up outside New Orleans on a small island called Dealcroix.

The Cajun ripple on his tongue grew stronger as he finished his beer and I finally blurted out the question I had felt too nerdy to ask all night- "Do you watch True Blood?"

His answer was no.

So, instead of discussing my obsession with the soap opera plots and wild night love affairs I turned the conversation to travel. "Why did you leave such a great place like Louisiana? You were right next to party central and the history there just seems so cool."

"Katrina."

His words dropped into the room like a lead blanket, cloaking us all. I am an idiot. I am the most insanely insensitive, stupid, moronic, woman in the world! I took in the darkness of his eyes and the concern Rachel branched out to him. How could I have forgotten? Or no, wait, I didn't forget, I just, ummm, I don't know, I didn't think. Instead I sat there like a rediculous uneducated teenager and asked about a silly vampire show when I should have been an adult and connected the association of his hometown and one of the worst tragedies to happen in the past decade. Idiot!

The truth is, though, that no one will ever really be effected or even understand like the actual survivors involved. The people like Billy himself who sat on his roof for 3 days, pulling in the people he could, and watching the ones who didn't make it drift by him as he sat helpless. I searched his eyes longingly trying to connect, trying to find some shred of common ground between us to empathize on- and there was nothing.

I have my hometown, all crazy redneck inch of it, still there for me to visit and one day take my children to. I can get in my car right now and see my first home and the schools I went to if I choose. My mother has every photo of me as a child and not one bit of my past has been stolen the way his has.

How easy we forget the misfortune of others after the dust has cleared. How easy we viewers watching CNN go about our lives once the news has been turned off. I am ashamed at the expiration date of sympathy I have shown others and I am disgusted my the ego of man. It takes the mark of a storm or an oil spill to remind us of our own frailty and exactly how unprepared we are.

And even after the destruction is done- the mark lives on. In the hearts of the victims, on the world itself, reading.... Katrina wuz here.