On Edge

So I'm driving (well crawling, actually) along the 401 to work, wishing that I had actually woke up the 20 minutes earlier required for me to get to the Go Train when I hear this on 680 news about the Korean subway. I ponder the fact that a determined nut-job can do that much damage in this day of tightened security and international breath-holding...Maybe because it happened in South Korea, maybe they didn't think they were targets - not that awareness would do them much good: it seems that this is a random, untargeted attack by a lunatic.

The idiot in front of me driving the black-tinted Buick Rendezvous has yet to decide what lane he actually wants to be in. I don't think he's ever seen snow before by the way he's not getting into the bare grooves on the highway between the unplowed snow.

The radio then blurbs about Toronto's Subway being closed because of a chlorine smell

My brain is already thinking that I would've been in that part of the subway if I had made the train earlier. I'm already racing ahead to the possibility of now it being "our turn" and that my oversleeping is a "lucky break" that I'll tell in the stories afterward...Then it turns out to be nothing - subway service is returned and thousands of delayed commuters make their way as best they can through the wet white snow that blankets the city...Normality restored.

Or is it? Not once was I "scared" - there wasn't any indication that this was in fact an attack, and the Canadian media has not been as relentless in their coverage of Code Orange alerts. What's bugging me is the fact that something as innocuous as a gas leak can make the equation

Subway Gas Leak = Terrorist Attack

come to my mind so quickly. It makes me think that the terrorists have in fact accomplished their goal. They wanted us to know they can get to us, any time anywhere, and it could be totally random. We are touchable. And we know it.