Zombies . . . and Ebola

It was a strange juxtaposition.  Zombies and ebola.  Let me explain.

The neighboring city of Fort Myers held it's annual ZombieCon this past weekend.  A celebration of all-things zombie.  Folks dress up in elaborate zombie-themed costumes.  There are contests and music and special foods.  All the things you'd expect at any street festival.  All focused on zombies--the living dead.

Needless to say, such an event provides many photographic opportunities for television.  And the local stations did themselves proud, covering the event in great detail.  TV screens were filled with graphic images of decaying flesh masks and make-up gone wild.  Some of it was pretty silly.  A lot of it rather scary.  And most of it just plain gross.

I was shocked, however, not so much by the event or the make-up as I was by the way the stories about the ZombieCon were butted right up next to stories about the ebola crisis.  It struck me as rather tasteless.  I'm all for good fun.  And dress up is indeed a game the whole family can play!  But our national fascination with the zombies, animated dead bodies who dine on the flesh of the living, is bizarre at best.  Then again, maybe it's not.  Maybe it really is rather understandable.

One thing about dressing up like a zombie:  when you're done playing make-believe, you can wipe off the makeup, take off the raggedy costume, and resume your everyday life.  You can't do that with diseases like ebola or AIDS or cancer.  You can control being a zombie.  And we all know zombies aren't real.  But ebola isn't fake.  HIV/AIDS is very real.  Cancer impacts most every family. And ISIS and drought and tornadoes and forest fires that last for months . . . there are some things we can't seem to control.  Things that really frighten us.  Maybe that's why it's such a relief to be a  zombie--if only for a weekend.