A chipper note of menace
"Be safe!" seems to have become the default valediction in America these days.
“Be safe,” the grocery checkout girl says.
From what, I wondered. I’d only come in for a box of orzo noodles; had there been recent pasta-related fatalities? Were packets of orzo exploding in homes across America and, if so, why are these things still on the shelf?
Or was it some kind of threat?
“Have a great weekend and be safe,” says the flight attendant as we deplaned. Does she really care about my safety? Granted, we just touched down in Atlanta and some situational awareness isn’t a bad idea. But maybe she could have been more specific. “Have a great weekend, don’t take the MARTA after dark, and avoid Lenox Mall.” That adieu might actually keep visitors safe, rather than the ominous and robotic be safe that implies some nebulous threat persistently afoot wherever you turn.
“Be safe,” says the insurance company rep before hanging up the phone. Her accent sounded Southern but her farewell suggested she’d spent the morning dodging IEDs and rooftop snipers.
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Pam,” I said, fed up with all this safety instruction. “The yakuza waiting for me outside don’t know I slapped some C-4 under their Range Rover. It’s them you ought to advise be safe.”
With all the pleasant ways to take leave—God bless, have a good day, see ya ‘round, take it easy, peace out—we seem to have settled on be safe. What frenzied single mom who’s seen every episode of Fear Thy Neighbor dreamed that one up, and why are we all going along with it?
Nonetheless, be safe seems to have become the default valediction in America these days. According to the vast number of strangers telling me to be safe, you’d think I was being human-trafficked across the border and not simply heading home with some English ivy to plant in the garden.
Indeed, it would be much nicer, on occasion, to be urged to live dangerously. Instead, leaving your house means a procession of strangers foisting their anthropophobia onto you. What’s out to get them? I can’t figure it out. But I’ve never been a fan of Big Safety’s dark embrace. Leaning into recklessness has worked out just fine for me so far, even when it hasn’t.
I wondered if for those who live where shrapnel falls like rain and the terrorist colony next door wants to shove you into the sea, is be safe a casual sayonara?
“No, that would be gloomy. We know how to be safe,” a friend from Israel said when I asked about au revoir in the Holyland.
“It’s the American psyche,” dashed a friend from London. “You’re quite suspicious of one another. And you’re also health-and-safety obsessed. Americans are paranoid they won’t live forever.”
If you’re going to tell me to be safe, at least give me something to work with. “Be safe and watch out for Shifty Bess who’s always hanging around the basketball courts. She gave me syphilis,” would be much more useful than the generic be safe I get from Mr. Rodriguez every morning at the corner store.
It’s depressing this entire country finds it acceptable to part ways on this chipper note of menace. And I don’t want to hear about crime, or Covid, or crazies on the subway. Keep the fear porn on the Internet, where it belongs. The best goodbyes ought to leave strangers a bit puzzled, not on guard. “See ya later!” is my favorite farewell where it’s obvious to both parties you’ll never, in fact, see each other again—cab drivers, tourists, call center workers.
“Thanks, see ya later!” I say to the TSA agent who just rummaged through my underwear, to which she cocked a pierced eyebrow and shrugged, “never know.”
“See ya later,” I signed off on a customer support call to a phone farm in Bangalore after a crappy pair of headphones stopped working.
“Ok, be safe,” she replied in the billowy English of the subcontinent. Guess they got to her, too.
Oh my gosh. Be safe means be careful in lawless America.