... but I can tell you why fire engines are red.

Why are fire engines red?

Fire engines are red because newspapers are read, too, and two times two is four, and three times four is twelve, and twelve inches is a ruler, and a ruler was Queen Mary, and Queen Mary was a ship that sailed on the sea, and in the sea there are fish, and on fish there are fins, and everyone knows that the Finns fought the Russians, and fire engines are always rushin' around, and THAT'S why fire engines are red!

A magician shared that little wordplay at a company picnic my father's former employers had one summer, circa 1988. For some reason, though I heard him say it only once (and there was no Google in those days for me to go search for the spiel later), my very young brain retained every word. I repeated it for my parents later. I made my little brothers memorize it. We incorporated it into our Entertain All Guests at the Kander Home-and-Road-Show routine.

I probably haven't said those words in close to two decades.

Then last week, a coworker handed me a ruler, and said: "Beth, I'm giving you this because you rule!"

I said, "Well, I don't know if I rule, but I can tell you that rulers factor in to why fire engines are red."

And then, like I'd been saying it every day for the last twenty years, without stumbling even once, I told him why fire engines are red. (And then he called me a weirdo and went back to his office.)

How did I pull that out of the recesses of my memory? The human brain is endlessly fascinating. Lately I feel that my memory has been poorer than usual. I will meet six new people at a dinner party and remember the names of only three. I'll forget to check email before I leave the house and have to stop by my office to log on and get the directions I needed that were waiting in my inbox. I'll pack a lunch and leave it on the counter when I exit the building.

Lately, I can't tell you what I had for breakfast the day before, what outfit I was wearing before I put my pajamas on, what the house number is on the apartment directly across the street from me...

...but, as I'm sure you'll be relieved to know... I can tell you quite definitively why fire engines are red.

"The whole world is a very narrow bridge/and the most important part/is not to be afraid..."

The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is difficult to fathom because the prologue to the tragedy is so familiar: rush hour. Downtown, major metropolitan area. People talking on their phones to their friends, yelling at kids in the backseat to be quiet, sipping a Starbucks latte. Maybe noticing the gas tank needs to be refilled. Crossing a big, sturdy bridge.

And then plummeting faster than comprehension allows towards the murky waters of the Mississippi.

Earthquakes are considered a particularly psychologically-damaging form of natural disaster; evidently, the sensation of the very earth becoming unsteady has a deeply unsettling impact. Where can you go, what can you do, when the foundation you have trusted countless times before suddenly gives way? A bridge collapse must be similar: trapped in your car, no longer with a road beneath you...

It seems that the fear of other imminent bridge collapses now haunts the country. While still reeling from and dealing with the Minneapolis disaster, reporters across the country have raced to proclaim what impending potential doom awaits. Of the 10,000 bridges in metro-Jackson, one reporter warned me as I strode on the elliptical machine, almost 3,000 are in need of major repair.

The dangerous state of our nation's bridges and the lack of funding for repairs is the focus of most conversations about the Minneapolis collapse. On the radio this morning, as I drove familiar roads to work, a road commission official being interviewed was clearing his throat nervously, assuring the public: "Yes, many bridges out there are in need of repair, and deemed structurally deficient. But that doesn't mean they are going to collapse. You can't start being afraid than any bridge you drive on might crumble. You have to keep on driving."

It brought tears to my eyes, not only for those impacted by the recent bridge collapse, but for all of us who must live with that tenuousness. Nearly all the bridges are shaky, but we have to drive across them, though they might break. We are all structurally deficient, but we have to open our hearts, though they might break. We have to keep going, keep driving, keep hoping.

Then I made it to my desk, and on my NPR homepage, there was this picture, with this caption:


Lorena Trinidad-Martinez is baptized following a funeral mass for her father, who was killed in the collapse of the I-35W bridge on Wednesday.

A family keeping faith in the wake of tragedy. Moving not only metaphorically but also achingly literally from water to water, one death, one life. It is not fair; it just is.

And so we keep crossing the next bridges as we come to them.