I’m waiting for the annual phone call:
“Please call me as soon as you can,” her voice will say on
the recording. “I’m just wanting to say
how much I love you, in case I die during this hurricane and never see you
again.”
My dear friend lives
in the land of surprise sinkholes, giant cockroaches, giant, poisonous snakes,
alligators in the back yard and possibly up trees. From my point of view,
living there qualifies one to make that kind of call pretty much daily. Still,
it’s not the call you want to get from someone you love.
“What the heck are you and your ancient father doing?” I’ll
want to know. “Why aren’t you on your way to someplace else??”
“Oh, because,” she’ll say. “He doesn’t want to leave his
house, and we’ve always been fine. And it’s very uncomfortable for both of us
to travel and then to stay somewhere else. It would be a strain and we might
get ill. And we’d have to go far up the
coast, so it’ll be crowded because everyone will be headed up the coast. And if
we were going to do it, we should have left yesterday.”
As she speaks, in my mind I’ll be ticking off items on the Stupid Sheet
that would indicate that “Difficult, Uncomfortable, and Should Have Already
Gone” are no excuses at all: Item: congenital heart disease and COPD, getting ever worse
with age; Item: chronic illnesses – yes, plural – that unexpectedly erupt into
violently acute, extremely painful, often hospitalizing flare-ups, especially
when the bodies involved are subjected to stress; Item: why would anyone take
the chance of dying of a heart attack during a hurricane when it’s unlikely
rescue services would be able to reach you, and leave an ill daughter to sit
and stew with your dead body until the bigger crisis is over? Item: there’s
enough money to fly and there are friends who live and would welcome you who
live far from the Hurricane State; Item: this happens every sodding year,
dammit, it’s not like it’s a surprise event you can’t plan for; Item: Do you
really want to spend the remains of a hurricane in a roofless house – again??? Item:
AAArrrrrggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
Well. I’ve already written a SHOUTING LETTER, once again
pointing all that out. With any luck it’ll get there just before the hurricane;
most likely she won’t get it until after the hurricane, assuming it doesn’t get
blown away with untold numbers of other stuff. I’ll call and shout tonight, but
it won’t make any difference – they don’t seem to have a copy of the Stupid
List.
Hurricane Season. I hate it. I HATE it!
For weeks now I’ve been trying to marshal my thoughts in
order to make a statement about the advanced insanity we’re sinking deeper and
deeper into in my state – not her state, her state is ALWAYS a flipping a mad house –
and our gasping-for-breath nation. Once again, I’ll say it: I’m glad I’m 63, and
not 23. Jeezus. I’m not sure why all our pressure-cooked brains haven’t just
burst out of our heads, and there’s not really a whole lot to say about the
situation that hasn’t already been said. Except maybe this: the real evil in this situation is embodied
by the Republicans in government. Most of them know better, and they aren’t
speaking up, standing up, rebelling, restraining, restricting, removing,
controlling, confronting, rejecting, or attempting in any fashion to fix our
national disaster. There is a special room in Hell for such beings. It makes me
wish for a God who throws lightning bolts. There would be a lot of fried pol
balls in Washington.
I’m not a religious person, but boy, does our so-called
President fit the definition of the antichrist. He’s a deceiver; he’s
proclaimed himself the chosen one, the only one who can save us; he claims to
have performed miraculous works; he is VILE and DANGEROUS, and yet people
believe his lying words and seem to be blind to his actual actions. It’s frightening.
It’s incomprehensible. It’s beyond bizarre. It’s enough to make one believe in
the Devil. Incarnate.
OK, my brain’s about to explode again.
And then there’s the gun thing. You know what? I used to
believe that some people could be, should be, allowed to have guns – some kinds
of guns, for hunting maybe, for target shooting, for – well, that’s about it,
actually. But now? Now I think those gun-owners who were responsible and
thoughtful and safe have blown it, and no one should be allowed to have guns. They
didn’t stand up, except for a very small handful of them, and force the issue. They
didn’t stand up and insist on the necessary restrictions. They didn’t stand up
and insist on safety courses and measures. They didn’t stand up and insist on
making military weapons illegal for non-military people. They didn’t stand up.
They didn’t stand up, and now I don’t think we have a choice
but to make gun-owners’ nightmares reality. Take their guns away. Make them
register them and not let them have them at home. Keep them in an armory, where
they need to be strictly controlled and checked out for use. Force annual
safety courses and take the use of them away from anyone who doesn’t comply. Don’t
allow people to buy ammunition except
from specially-controlled sources. Don’t allow sales except under
highly-restrictive controls. Force gun manufacturers to install really technical safety locks on every gun. Don’t allow them to be carried around in public.
Only allow them to be checked out by people over the age of 35, and only for
brief, strictly-controlled periods of time and uses. Make violations hugely
expensive.
Almost no one needs a
gun. Wanting isn’t the same as
needing. We want lots of things that we can’t have, don’t get, aren’t
tolerated. You blew it. Tough. You reap what you sowed.
Oh, there it goes: my brain just melted. I can’t take it anymore.
I’m going out to my garden to stomp on squash bugs. Good luck with the state of
the world. I’ll be naming the bugs and the tomato hornworms as I deal with
them. Garden voodoo.
Hurricane season. I HATE it.
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