Now that the leftover turkey has been ala king’d or jook’d and we are officially rolling like a winter swell into the crash of holidays, perhaps it’s time to start planning for Jan. 13. After all, that will be the first anniversary of the day we didn’t get annihilated. That’s certainly something to celebrate. That’s a day to take stock, be grateful and say, “One year ago, for a moment there (well, 38 minutes, actually) we thought it was all over. This year was a gift. Total gravy. Gravy over all.”
The anniversary might be a time to put away the anger now that everyone involved in the massive mistake has either been fired, embarrassed or re-elected. It could be designated an official time of healing, of relabeling all the forgetting that has already happened as “forgiveness” instead of “worried about other things already.”
There could be a parade featuring all the great things we didn’t miss out on: the Honolulu boys winning the Little League World Series, Bruno Mars’ homecoming concert and, uh, some other stuff, but hey, those two things were pretty epic.
There could be a poster contest for school kids along the themes of “Why it’s good to still be alive” and “What you should (and should not) do when you make a mistake.”
Or, ooh, a huge concert inside Diamond Head crater just like back in the day; a massive, sweaty sea of humanity all bouncing and skanking right outside the very building where the boo-boo happened, like a giant sage-smudging ritual to wipe out the bad vibes that emanated from that spot.
The modern Crater Festival could be called “a celebration of continued living” with concert T-shirts bearing slogans like, “Brah, that was nutz.” The event could feature bands like Kalapana singing their hits “What Do I Do?” and “You Make It Hard” and dedicating them to everyone involved in causing and exacerbating the terrifying false alarm. And then there could be some classic songs dedicated from the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency to the public: The Krush singing “Regrets,” C&K singing “Make It Up to You” — the list goes on.
(It’ll never happen, so nobody call a meeting today to discuss the parameters, OK? Unless something is monetized, sponsored or floating out beyond the reach of the Honolulu Police Department and the state, massive tipsy celebrations just don’t happen anymore. This is just for what-if.)
But somebody ought to plan something. The day shouldn’t slip by unnoticed except for Facebook photos that resurface of families hunkering in a bathtub or video of people running for their lives in Manoa. The whole state went through this together, the fear amplified because it was shared. Maybe relief and love of life can be amplified, too.
As the new year approaches, there are going to be dozens of retrospective stories in the media looking back at everything Hawaii went through this year: the April floods, the Puna lava flow, the string of near-miss hurricanes. This was an intense year. But at one point it seemed like we might not see 2018 at all.
Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.
