Years ago when my daughter was a child, she imagined dinosaur spray, the kind a child can sssst into the air with hand waving, holding an imaginary spray can out, and making a sound reminiscent of snakes to ensure that no vicious Tyrannosaur could enter the bathroom while she was brushing her teeth. She sprayed the doorways and told me the dinosaur could not enter and eat her up.

It was protection against her own vivid imagination, and it always made me smile. After a week of such easy protection, we went on a vacation, a four-day stint at a favorite lake. She sprayed the house with bad guy spray, and assured us that no bad guys would enter and take our things or hide inside waiting for our return. I smiled and wished it was that easy.

We returned to find all was well. My husband and I celebrated our anniversary by buying each other watches. We celebrated time, twenty-two years together that we had been safe from the bad guys of the world. But two days passed and we learned that a friend of ours had lost her husband in the war against Iraq. A marriage of two years ended by bad guys.

No one had bad guy spray in the Twin Towers of New York on September 11, and all those soldiers sent to Iraq and like places to respond to that attack on Americans also did not have such a spray.

We listened to news day after day of one, two, and three soldiers killed by snipers or bombs or some other deadly means by Iraqi forces opposing our view of the world. But that day the loss of Lt. Leif Nott came as a surprise.

His face came daily to mind afterward, and I wished that my daughter’s bad guy spry had been available to him. I couldn’t smile anymore when she sprayed the doorway of the bathroom. Bad guys don’t pay attention to such innocent imaginations. They end marriages, destroy families, and herald the loss of life as their due.

If only we could sssst them into oblivion, hands waving imaginary cans in the air, all of us sounding our defensive snake sounds. Bad guys, you can’t come here; we have sprayed our the doors of our lives, and you are barred entry.

We must celebrate time, daily, that we have been safe from the bad guys, and remember those who didn’t have the spray. Our innocence is gone, and our imaginations are worked to a frenzy.