So she thought: Is it a curse to live in interesting times?

There is an old Chinese saying which says, "May you live in interesting times." It's actually considered a curse, indicating that you wish the cursee would end up having an uncomfortable life, or at least an unpredictable one.

My other favorite Chinese curse is, "May all your children be acrobats," which, when you think about it, could be almost as uncomfortable and unpredictable as living in interesting times. Wise men and women, those ancient Chinese.

I've realized recently that no matter when I die, those who remember me will be able to at least say I lived in interesting times. They'll probably be able to say it about you, too.

If you're my age or older, you've lived through, at the very least, three official wars (for me, Vietnam, Gulf and Iraq). Maybe you even fought in one of them. You can now say you've been front-and-center for the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. You lived through the day Americans were targeted, within our own nation's borders, for a massive terrorist attack.

Sometimes when those things happen, you realize you are witnessing history. And sometimes you only realize it after the fact.

I was reminded of this when one of my sons came home the other day and said he was studying the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in his history class, which happened only 23 years ago next month but which, nonetheless, is already being studied in high school history classes all over the country. When kids start studying stuff that happened in your lifetime as "history," it's either a sign you're growing old, or that you've just lived in very, very, interesting times.

The Chernobyl story struck a chord with me, because I was in Europe at the time it happened. I dug out an old photo taken on April 27, 1986, where my friends and I are sitting on the front steps of the American Consulate in a small Italian town, waiting for it to open. We had showed up early that morning upon hearing that there had been some kind of nuclear explosion the day before, several hundred miles east of where we were staying. We were not worried so much as curious.

The only newspaper we could find was a German daily, (which I snapped a photo of) which bore a banner headline declaring "Atom Staub," (which meant nothing to us, except the "atom" part) with a map of the general region we were in at the time.

The consulate never opened that day, so we walked back to the youth hostel in the rain, figuring if our consulate didn't feel it was an important enough event to open up the office for, it was likely a "Three Mile Island" kind of brush with disaster.

But the next day, there were lots of handsome brown-eyed Italian polizia going through those lovely, hilly streets where I was living, telling everyone to go inside and take showers immediately if we'd been outdoors, and not to eat any of the fresh fruits or vegetables we may have purchased from the open-air markets in the last day or two. And this time the message wasn't in German, it was in broken, but still very understandable English.

It turns out that "Atom Staub," means, literally, "Atom Dust." Otherwise known as fallout. Interesting times, indeed.

Having said all that, I guess it's notable that I lived through the whole experience with no ill effects, other than perhaps absorbing enough radiation to give me that glowing complexion I always wanted (and which, thanks to Strontium 90 and Cesium 137, I will keep until at least 2016), and an interesting story to tell.

But something tells me that the things we've all lived through so far are going to seem tame next to some of the things up-and-comers like my kids are going to be facing. Climate change. The ongoing terrorist threat. Building back up from a "down" economy. And other things which my middle-aged imagination can't even conceptualize.

And depending on how you look at it, that's either a really scary idea, or a really interesting one. After all, the next time there's an "Atom Staub," situation anywhere in the world, laptops will be booted up, and within minutes, information will be disseminated for people to take action, and take it quickly. So perhaps for every challenge, there will be new and better solutions readily available. That's my hope, anyway.

Yes, perhaps the curse, "may you live in interesting times," can be stood on its head with a slight modification and turned into a benediction -- a prayer for those who come after us: May you live, successfully, through interesting times. May the speed of your available technologies always outpace the speed of the challenges you face.

May you live long enough to appreciate just how interesting living in "interesting times" can be.

Diane Sayre is a freelance writer living in Hanford. Her column appears weekly in the Sentinel. Readers can write to her at The Hanford Sentinel, P.O. Box 9, Hanford, CA 93232.

(March 23, 2009)