These were Olympic Games searching for an identity. At exactly 1:25 a.m. Saturday, they found one. Or maybe it found them.
A pipe bomb left in an unattended satchel exploded in Centennial Park. It happened at the edge of a crowd celebrating nothing more uplifting than a warm summer night. One woman was killed. One hundred other people were hurt.It could have been worse. It could have happened anywhere. But the fact that it happened here mattered.
Because up until that moment, it was easy for most of us to be indifferent about these Olympics. To let the whiners complain about late buses, warm Cokes and tacky signs. Or to let the apologists pretend everything was swell. To let everybody see only what they wanted to see.
Now, the most important thing is that these games go on, not as the worst, or the even best because, frankly, the most normal would be better than either.
Normal enough, anyway, to remind us why it was so important to go on with the Olympic movement after Munich in 1972, when a handful of Palestinian terrorists slaughtered 11 innocent Israeli athletes and turned the rings inside out.
Normal enough to remind us of all the scares and all the indignities, large and small, that we have endured since to keep them going: armed guards, frequent searches, metal detectors outside every venue, budgets that would strain some Third World economies.
And normal enough, most of all, to remind us that if we stop going through all the trouble to be on hand this time, the next time it's going to be the athletes in a television studio, marksmen on every roof, and everyone else at home on pay-per-view. If there is a next time.
Remember: The person who left that satchel on the ground and walked away wouldn't mind if it turns out like that. He is colder than most of us can imagine. And still out there. Maybe he had help. Maybe not. Either way, this kind of looniness is increasingly becoming a fact of life. Proof is no further than the next scheduled newscast, even closer if you're wired for cable. Sometimes the motive is immediately apparent. Sometimes not.
We already have metal detectors in our airports and too many of our high schools. Panic now, let the unreasonable voices dominate the debate, and metal detectors will go up on the perimeter of the public squares next.
The same people that were ripping the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games for the transportation bugs and the tasteless backdrops are about to start ripping them for not providing enough security. That isn't close to true. ACOG has taken every reasonable precaution to ensure the safety of everyone at these games. And then some. Responsibility for the rest is up to the rest of us.
Someone has to let the person who left that satchel in Centennial Park know some things are as important to us as they are to him. In this case, it's bringing the world's best athletes together every couple of years to find out who's really best, then throwing a couple of bashes to while away the hours.
The spectacle the Atlanta Games has become was excessive from the start, almost certainly too much. But that's a matter reasonable people can disagree about reasonably. Whether we should have the right to stage the games in public is not.
That was the very message people here sent as they began emerging from the darkness of the early morning hours, strangely skittish and subdued at first, then bolder as their numbers grew.
By late morning the atmosphere at most of the venues had regained some semblance of normal. In a few others, it was positively giddy. The tennis center at Stone Mountain, for example, fairly rocked as fans on Court 1 sat out a three-hour rain delay by singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "B-I-N-G-O" and "Take Me Out To The Ballgame."
At landlocked Jonesboro, meanwhile, where the organizers created "Atlanta Beach" to accommodate beach volleyball, U.S. team member Mike Dodd put things into perspective.
"We're all sad and we're praying, mostly for the families of the victims," Dodd said. "But you've got to go on. You've just got to continue to live your life.
"Otherwise, the wrong side wins."