The duct tape business was just a well-meaning ruse, of course.

You know it and I know it. The same goes for those rolls of plastic sheeting that we’re supposed to have on hand to keep the toxic spores from seeping through our windows and doors and into our lungs.

The same goes for the supply of fresh batteries for the radio, too, and the bottled water, and the three-day stash of food in the basement (which should, the experts advise, include some comfort items such as candy and soft drinks to make us feel better while we wait for the poisonous gas cloud to pass.)

And if you were one of those people who heeded the government’s suggestions to stock up on those anti-terrorism emergency supplies, perhaps it afforded you at least a little sense of control in your life.

Which is more than I did when the orange alert was issued more than a week ago. It’s more than most Americans did, in fact, or are likely to do in the future.

The sad truth, however, is that none of us can know how to reconcile this disturbing dichotomy that comes with living in our new age of terrorism. Not now, not ever. It’s been more than 16 months since the terrorists struck, and we’re no closer to understanding how it is possible to live on high alert while also going about our business as usual.

Soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft tried to explain to an anxious nation that being on high alert meant that we must all now keep our eyes and ears open to anything out of the ordinary as we attempted to go on with our normal routines.

He suggested that we call the authorities if we saw someone taking pictures of petrochemical plants or other installations that were not your standard snapshot subjects. He urged us to be mindful of the letters and packages that arrived by mail at our homes and to recognize that our public water supplies could be in jeopardy from lethal biochemical agents. High alert, in other words, was our signal to be constantly on guard.

Now, except for the silly duct tape suggestion, we’re right back to where we started.

When the most recent orange alert was issued, we did the only thing that individuals were capable of doing. We worried a bit more than we did the day before, when code yellow prevailed, and we waited for the worst. If we didn’t suddenly become more vigilant, as our government requested of us, it’s because we still had no idea what in the heck to be vigilant about. There seemed to be no point in walking around with our eyes peeled if we had no clue as to what it was we were supposed to be suspicious about.

All we could do was to hold our breath and pray that we wouldn’t hear the dreaded news break on TV or radio, informing us that it had, indeed, happened again somewhere. President Bush was right, of course, when he said, “[T]here is no such thing as perfect security against a hidden network of cold-blooded killers.”

If our government insists on color-coding all of its terrorist information for public consumption, upgrading our anxiety regardless of how admittedly vague, nonspecific and even inaccurate the intelligence may be, it seems inevitable that one day we will have heard the boy cry wolf one too many times and simply stop listening.

After all, you can either live on high alert, or you can live normally. Trying to do both at the same time is like sealing up the windows with duct tape to keep out the plague – an exercise in futility.