Well, the political season is upon us. Lock your vaults and hide your daughters. Seems every politician, known and unknown, from both sides of the aisle, is throwing his (or her; hi Hillary!) hat into the ring. Or since hats are passe, "forming exploratory committees." You know. Like a colonoscopy. The runup to the Presidential choosing is Darwinism at its most elemental. "Dog eat dog" is too bland a phrase for what we're about to witness; "slash and burn" says it more plainly. And brother, does it seem to take forever, this season we're in. If farming season lasted as long, we'd be harvesting green beans the size of dugout canoes. This Chinese water torture we Americans put ourselves through every four years puts me in mind of a childhood memory.
When I was a boy, my family would sometimes take Sunday drives. Long Sunday drives. Endless, bleak, soul-killing, waiting-for-Godot Sunday drives. There we'd be, my dad behind the wheel of our Ford Galaxy (Clark Kent hat tilted at a rakish angle), my mom beside him. In the back seat were my little brother, and yours truly. Along about the eighteenth hour of the drive, my brother and I would grow bored (although "bored" doesn't really say it; that's like calling the firebombing of Dresden a "warmish day"). Anyway, Scott would casually throw his leg over mine. I'd toss it back. He'd do it again, with a bit more force. I'd toss it back. He'd stick his tongue out at me. I'd look back and pretend to eat boogers. He'd pinch me. I'd slug him. And so on. The only thing that could end the fun was my dad, eyes still on the road, screaming obscenities while flailing his arm back over the seat, hoping to nail one of us, or both. While this occurred my mom would laugh behind her hand, but I still saw it.
That's kinda like what election season is like. Yeah.