Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls(44)

I’ll say that for China, though, offer to pay, and before you can stab a rooster with a rusty screwdriver someone has taken you up on it. I think they want to catch you before you get sick, but whatever the reason, within minutes you’re back on the street, searching the blighted horizon and wondering where your next meal might be coming from.





Health-Care Freedoms and Why I Want My Country Back




Dear Fellow Patriot/Patriotess,

Like many of you, I’d originally planned to carry a sign. The one I’d worked on pictured a witch doctor with the face of—it kills me to say it—our president, with a bone through his nose and that African-type paint on his cheeks. Under that I had written, “Indonesian Muslim Welfare Thug Hands Off My Healthcare You Kenyan Socialist Baby Grandma Killer.” I thought it looked pretty good, but then I ran it by my son, Todd. He’s the artistic one in the family. “Well, Mom,” he said to me, “it’s a little…busy.”

We got to talking about my concerns, and because I have so many of them, he suggested I go the flyer route. The last I heard, our God-given right to mimeograph has not been taken away—Chairman Obama’s left us that, at least!—and Todd assures me that this will work just as well as a picket sign. “The key, Mom, is to hand these to as many people as possible.”

He then gave me the T-shirt I’m wearing, which I unfolded and held before me to read: “Big…Dyke?” I said.

And Todd said, “Exactly!” A dyke, he explained, is someone who holds back the flood of encroaching socialism. And that pretty much sums me up in a nutshell! “Let’s add the word ‘proud’ to that,” I said. So out came the press-on letters, and voilà!

He’s made such a turnaround, that boy of mine. Back at college he was as liberal as they come—all “Down with Bush” and “Satan/Cheney ’08!” But that’s what our universities do now—they brainwash.

I said, “Get out into the real world, then you’ll see!” I said, “Pay some taxes for once in your life and you’ll be mad as hell too!”

And that’s exactly what happened. After graduating with a useless degree in Dance History, Todd got a job at our local community college, working in the admissions office, and when he saw the bite Uncle Sam was taking out of his paycheck, he came right around, I’ll tell you what. So did his roommate, Miles. The two of them met in college and have been as thick as thieves ever since. I actually sometimes call him “Shadow,” not because he’s black, which he is, but because he and my son are so close. It’s actually him who xeroxed these flyers for me.

Both Miles and Todd are familiar with protest marches, mostly from their misguided college days, but as my son said, “Walking is walking, Mom, and whether you’re for torture or against it, you’re going to need to drink lots of water. That’s rule number one: Stay Hydrated! You’ll also need some good, comfortable shoes and a hat that’ll keep the sun off your face.”

I got a sombrero and hung tea bags off the brim, but Todd said it sent a mixed message, like I supported illegal immigration—which I don’t! He said it was better to wear this cone-shaped thing, a wimple, he called it, though it looked to me more like a dunce cap. He said, “Mom, please. A little sophistication!”

I said, “How will it keep the sun off my face?” So he added a visor to the front of it. As for the writing that runs top to bottom, it might look like ASSHOLE, but it’s actually A.S.S.H.O.L.E., which stands for:

Another

Savvy

Senior

Hopes

Obama

Loses

Everything



That might sound harsh, but it’s how I feel. His teeth, his family, the keys to his car—I want that man to be left with nothing, just like he’s trying to leave us with nothing. My only worry was that it was vague, and people would think that I was the *.

“Not at all,” my son told me. “It’s a very common acronym, like CPAC, and everyone will know what it means.” So now here I am in my Big Proud Dyke T-shirt. I’ve got my cone-shaped hat on, and I’m here to say that I’m mad as hell and I want my country back. I want a Christian president who was born in America, not Africa, and I don’t want a death panel telling me when I can and cannot live. Then there’s the tax business, which really makes my blood boil. The way it is now, if I win the lottery I’ll have to give the government a much higher percentage than I would have if I’d won it when Bush was in office.

“What else gets your goat?” Todd asked when he was typing up my flyer. And I told him I was sick of the president talking down to me. “Like I’m some kind of a…some kind of a…”

“Uninformed idiot?” he said.

And I told him that was it exactly. “I’m tired of being talked to like I’m an uninformed idiot. I think a lot of Americans are, but we’ll see who’s the idiot when I join that historic march on Washington!”

Todd agreed 100 percent, and then he took me to the Greyhound station, where I got on the bus for Seattle.





Now Hiring Friendly People




To those who don’t travel very often, the Courtyard Marriott might seem like a decent enough hotel. It’s clean, sure, and the staff is polite. I wouldn’t give you two cents for its pillows, though, and the tubs are far too shallow for my taste. In the deserted lobby of one I stayed at in New Hampshire, there was a coffee bar—not a Starbucks but a place that “proudly served” Starbucks, and sold it alongside breakfast cereals and prepackaged sandwiches. I noticed it on my way back from lunch, and just as I decided to get a cup of coffee, someone came from around the corner and moved in ahead of me.