Chaos people: They generate plenty of anger

On Tuesday, firefighters, police and rescue divers rushed to the Post Street Bridge, responding to reports that a guy had jumped into the Spokane River. But soon this guy was seen climbing up from the river near the Spokane Club, unharmed. He then ran away. Last week, a man crashed his car into Fernan Lake in North Idaho. He ran away. While divers searched for him, the man was at home.

Uh oh. The chaos people strike again.

The world is divided into two types — chaos people and non-chaos people. Chaos people generate the problems that non-chaos people must fix. Chaos people straddle all socio-economic classes, all ages and both genders. The millionaire mom who is always an hour late to pick up her children is a chaos person. Those Enron executives who cooked the books? Chaos people. I read stories now with an eye for the non-chaos people, society’s ignored heroes. They are often secondary to the story, because the chaos people make livelier copy and better visuals.

In the Fernan Lake story, many non-chaos people got involved. The witnesses who saw the car plunge into the lake dutifully reported it to police. Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department divers searched the lake for hours. Do you ever have that nightmare where you are swimming in an icky lake and creatures from the bottom nip at your legs? That’s how I picture the murky waters in which the divers searched.

Family members waited by the side of the lake, expecting at any moment to see the body of their loved one. Later, when the man was discovered safe, Sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said of the needless search: “It makes everybody angry.”

Yes it does.

Children are often the innocent victims of chaos people. Nearly two weeks ago, a transient allegedly kidnapped two preschoolers in North Idaho. Dozens of non-chaos folks jumped in eagerly to help, as they always do when children are involved. Coeur d’Alene police assigned all its detectives to the case. Searchers from many different government agencies looked for the children, by land and by air. An Amber Alert was issued. Drivers along freeways saw the Amber Alert and worried and prayed for those missing tykes.

Capt. Ginger Swisher of the U.S. Forest Service finally located the transient. The children were found safe at a campsite south of Priest Lake. They were hungry. Owners and staff of a nearby tavern fed them, willingly and lovingly, in the way of most non-chaos people.

The story turned out to be a sad one in many ways. The children were part of a caravan of unemployed and poverty-burdened adults. The two children and three others were placed in foster care. By the way, good foster parents are society’s best example of non-chaos people cleaning up some awful messes.

I realize most non-chaos adults harbored, at one time, a chaos teen inside them. And we all go through patches of chaos. But consistent chaos is something true adults grow out of, the way you mature out of the urge to drive your car at unsafe speeds or guzzle seven beers at a party and call it an evening of “light drinking.”

Chaos people can transform into non-chaos people. It sometimes means facing down some terrible demons, such as addiction. It sometimes means simply changing some poor habits, such as always being late. But when chaos people transform, they should make amends.

Chaos people should apologize to lake and river divers, firefighters and police officers, and to those drivers who pay attention to Amber Alerts. Especially, chaos people need to apologize to the children victimized by them, children who grow up with the unfortunate belief that the world is a place of chaos where nobody is really in charge.