VIVA IL PAPA!
I remember the blear Berlin Wall
And the day that it started to fall,
And the part that was played
By a man unafraid —
The inspired and inspiring John Paul.
I do remember that day vividly. It was one of the most gratifying days of my life, and one of the most disturbing.
At the time, I was the editor of a news magazine published by an apparently staunch group of anti-communists. I had a 45-minute commute to the office and had been following the buzz for days on the car radio on NPR. It sounded like the Evil Empire might be crumbling and the Berlin Wall might be coming down, but who could know for sure? Was a crackdown looming? Shades of Hungary and Czechoslovakia?
When I got to the office that morning, everyone was talking about it. There was one guy in particular who pretended to be more knowledgeable than the rest, so, just for fun, I said, “Have you heard the latest?”
They were all ears.
“The Berlin Wall’s coming down!” I exclaimed. It hadn’t happened yet. I’d just made it up to see their reactions.
They were shocked, just as I’d expected, but also crestfallen.
I’ve had more than one epiphany in my life, but this was definitely one of them. I could tell by the looks in their eyes that they were disappointed. This was the moment we’d all been fighting for, I thought, and there they were acting like the world was coming to an end.
Evidently, they thought it was, at least for them.
The reason they seemed to have lost their reason was that they thought they’d lost their reason — their raison d’être. Without communists, what would happen to the anti-communists — the professional anti-communists, that is, the ones making money off of anti-communism? Yikes! They might have to find real jobs, and who would hire them?
I told them I’d just been kidding, and their relief was obvious. When the word came later in the day that my little joke had been prophetic and the Wall had really come down, I was too depressed to celebrate.