So I drive home at night with my son. My wife and daughter are at dance class. The power is out and every home around the lake is totally dark except for the people I hate who have generators. Even their outdoor Christmas lights are on, mocking my anti-disaster-preparedness-deficit-disorder with their winking oppressed-Chinese-child-labor brilliance.
Pitch blackness, and I have a yearning to play poker on line.
And everything we have runs on juice and there's no dinner either.
I sit in the darkness at my computer and imagine there must be some terrorist attack (probably from Iran... see? you were right all along like you always are George... I can call him by his first name since I am rapidly climbing towards conservatism and honorary Texanism).
My son breaks out a flashlight; the only one in the house and it's about as powerful as the argument for Saddam's WMD program.
He says, "Why don't you light a fire, Dad?"
It's how we heat the house anyway.
I get the fire started and he decides to read. Just like Abe Lincoln, that boy (God! Here I go singing the praises of another Republican). He's reading To Kill a Mockingbird. I explain that Harper Lee only wrote one book, and after that she decided never to write again. I tell him that if you win a Pulitzer and have an Oscar-winning movie made from your one book, you may as well hang up the skates anyway, and he says, "But you better not do that, Dad."
I tell him I can't. I've already written three and two of them have sold.
He breaks out the flashlight and shines it on the pages as he reclines on the couch by the fire.
Some Republican.
Hey! Tomorrow is KELLY'S BIRTHDAY!!
Happy Birthday Kelly!!!! She's my oldest friend (I mean that in a good, self-esteem-preserving way, old gal), and I love her forever.
Obviously, the power came back after a couple hours so I could post this. But we'll still find a way to believe you, Mr. Bush.
