and who was the third gunman?

in all the finals-induced chaos that breaks loose at the end of each semester, the time i spend speaking to my family goes down significantly. finals peppered with pathetic attempts to christmas shop and maintain a social life ends up saving a LOT of cell phone minutes. but i always revel in the very direct three hour journey back from south orange, new jersey to binghamton, new york. it's a car ride that i usually share with my dad. this is one of the few rides i take sans laptop, sans ipod, sans distractions. these vehicular dialogues are highlights. i like to think my dad and i have stimulating conversations, but it may just be a spark after i'm brain dead after finals.

we often talk about politics, or family, or life in general. this time we recently talked about the flighty minds of conspiracy theorists. my dad had recently watched a documentary. the kennedy assassination, george bush planning 9/11, etc. originally we talked about how ridiculous it is to think that someone could keep a secret this large safe in washington d.c. but then we discussed the psychology behind conspiracy theorists. my dad noted that some of the experts said that some people didn't want to believe the truth, so they searched for an alternative. noone wants to believe that only a few jerks took out a US president or knocked out one of America's proudest symbols. so there must be a more reasonable explanation behind it.

they also fill in blank gaps with their own ideas. they don't care if they are accurate or not, as long as the answers are filled.

this combination made me feel like these crazy conspiracy theorists aren't so far off. i do the same thing--i think everyone does. just not always with national schemes. if someone or something hurts you, it can never be as simple as what they say. it can't be as simple as what they don't say either. it has to be something more, an insecurity within themselves, baggage from previous incidents. a few years ago i was in a hole that i dug into a crater by perfecting this technique. it took a lot of time to catch this fault. the truth isn't half as bad as not knowing, and usually your mind fills in these gaps with the worst case scenario. instead of piecing together the blank spots with what we think, i think it's best to make it something that we know. but how? can we simply ask the person? can we just take what they say at face value? is it that simple? maybe it is just best to accept what we don't know and move on instead of holding out for something that is anti-climactic to what our imaginations have conjured up for us. or maybe this all just a giant conspiracy theory.

-k.