The little people (by Billy Coffey)

image courtesy of photobucket.com

Talk among the locals at the beach was most likely the same talk among the locals of anywhere nowadays—the oil spill. Particularly the part about how some scientists were predicting it could reach the waters off Virginia in a matter of months.

I was pondering that possibility while on the balcony of my hotel room one early morning, watching the fishing boats chug by on their way out to sea. I pondered the fragility of their livelihood and the courage required to partake in it.

And then I craned my neck and looked to the right and then the left, where hotels towered over small shops that sold everything from swimsuits to shells. And I wondered what would happen if worst possibility became stark reality.

It was the sort of thing affecting the Gulf Coast at that moment, I thought. People out of jobs and patience. Hurting. Scared.

Angry.

I settled back into my chair and stared out at the orange sun easing over the horizon. Just off the pier, a pod of dolphins broke the surface and disappeared again. They would be victims, too. And the fish they ate, and the crabs we tried to catch and marvel at the day before.

It wasn’t easy back home staring at the horrible underwater live feed of that hole belching black into the water. It was worse there, staring out at such beauty and knowing it could be spoiled soon.

Two Navy F-18s flew overhead on their approach to Oceana Naval Air Station. In the distance, a destroyer crested the hazy horizon on its way back home. The Navy has protected Virginia Beach and nearby Norfolk for generations, but I knew it couldn’t protect them from this. Oil was an enemy that guided missiles couldn’t destroy.

There are few emotions worse than a sense of dread, of knowing a Big Bad looms over the horizon and that there isn’t much at all you can do about it. I’ve had that feeling before. I think we all have. We all live in a world that makes us feel powerless sometimes, leaving us to feel as if we are mere pawns in a game with rules we cannot understand.

Talk around the restaurant we visited for breakfast centered around BP and the government. From the conversations I overheard, it was a draw as to which was hated more and trusted less. Most of the rage that day was pointed in the direction of the CEO of BP, who had remarked the day before that his company deeply cares “for the little people.”

That quote did not go over well with the people sitting around me. Little? They didn’t think so. They thought they were just as important as any CEO.

And as we munched on a traditional beach breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and eggs, I had to agree. The restaurant was crowded. We were surrounded by construction workers, fishermen, police, and military personnel. People who kept that city propped up and moving forward, who spent their off days relaxing on their front porches and taking care of lawns rather than whittling away their time on yachts and golf courses.

I could see the effects of their jobs. The bulging forearms and calloused hands on the builder next to me. The way the cop near the door instinctually sized up whomever walked through the door. They didn’t reign in the boardrooms, those people. And there was a good chance at least one of their utility bills was overdue. From the snippets of conversation I overheard, their social life currently consisted of church-league softball and barbeque cookouts.

These were good people. My people.

Little people.

And you crossed them at your own peril.

That’s what I wished the higher-ups in government and business would understand. That they depended on us a lot more than we depended on them. The fact that they didn’t seem to truly appreciate our value and maybe never had struck me as almost as tragic as the oil that could wash ashore in the coming months.

The crowd began to thin out as the start of the day neared. That was enough talk. It was time to go to work. Yet another lesson I found myself wishing the higher-ups would listen to us more and pander to us less.

All this talk about how to stop the oil. How to fix things. We’ve been promised that some of the greatest minds in the world are working to fix this. Somehow, that doesn’t make me more comfortable.

Know what would? Putting the little people in charge.

To read more from Billy Coffey, visit him at his blog What I Learned Today and follow him on twitter at @BillyCoffey