Uncertainty causes stress.
Waiting for the bad news is usually far worse than the bad news itself.
So we sit in a holding pattern, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And it's evident, almost tangible. Everywhere.
But the bad news is never in the place or time when we're waiting for it, and expecting it.
The bad news comes when you're sitting in the bar at the casino at 10:00 on a Saturday morning, up $30 and down 2 drinks on video poker.
And suddenly it's 1986 all over again, and you're standing in the kitchen in your Underoos eating Sugar Pops and watching what will be the biggest tragedy of your young life to date.
Until one Saturday night 11 years later when you're packing your bags for your very first trip abroad-- filled with excitement about the adventure ahead-- and you think Saturday Night Live is doing a really tasteless skit. But a week later you'll be standing on a roadside in London watching the coffin pass by followed by two motherless children.
Until one Tuesday morning when a kid pops into your classroom telling you a plane crashed into the Pentagon, and you're thinking he's crazy because we have jets patrolling to prevent that kind of thing. And you turn on the television and find out that it is so very much worse than a joke.

Or it comes on a Sunday afternoon in a phone call, and the woman who told you bedtime stories took a nap after dinner and didn't wake up. Or you go to visit her and she thinks you're a 6 year old boy. Or you get a message on your machine telling you a friend and mentor is gone. Or the phone rings in the early hours of the morning, and you're thinking how it's not your job to handle other people's bad news.

But as humans, we see each other through these things. And we wait together for the next shoe to drop.