Wait Until Wednesday...

From a prompt in a writer's gathering: "It’s Finally OVER!" 

(Written Monday, November 7, 2016 and adapted after Tuesday's election result)

Wait until Wednesday, both sides said smugly.

This tension of what-ifs, and tummy clench of divisive, demeaning, yet demanding of my attention rhetoric wears me out.

Protests and plans to dismantle the Electoral College aside, it’s OVER now that we’ve heard the fat man sing. His supporters, bless their mostly white and perhaps educationally challenged hearts, are more or less soothed, calmed, and reassured that there was no rigging, against him, anyway. Soothing of the left and assuaging the fears of those who are being bullied might not happen in my lifetime. How did we arrive here? How much shadow did we ignore? How big is the rend in the fabric of our nation?

How DO we go forward from here? Whatever the outcome, nothing is assured.

Whoever sits at the helm of our top-heavy government will have one hell-of-a-journey trying to keep us afloat. Mutiny is in the air, its fetid stench souring the taste for gestures of unification.

When I was five years old, Mary Eleanore Angelika Fox and I had a huge fight. We were best friends and about to enter kindergarten. The cause of the conflict is lost to memory, but I can imagine that anxiety and the cuspiness of entering school for the first time in our lives added to whatever kerfuffle got stirred between us.

At the height of the fight, I wanted OUT of her house and bolted toward the front door. I got it open and was part way out when she slammed it, catching my pointer finger between two-inches of oak and the door frame. Blood spurted everywhere. We were both crying. Angelika’s mother Edith came running, grabbed a towel and swooped me up in her arms, running up the stairs to the dirt path and across the gravel parking area at the top of our dead-end hill. Edith hollered, “BOBBY!” My mom came to the door. I, still howling, was transferred from one set of arms to the other. 

After the sniffling subsided, and a trip to Dr. Irving J. King where the nail was removed, and the finger stitched and bandaged, Angelika came over. Her mom made her apologize, but her heart wasn’t in it. She stood there, arms crossed and a scowl on her face as the muffled “sorry” fell to the floor. 

I was looking at the floor and saw that we were both wearing our new-for-school ruffled socks. Perhaps, we each needed a reason to be happy and came to the same solution: The new white lace fancy socks we'd both chosen at Woolworths.  I began to giggle. I looked up. She tried not to smile, but her corners curled up and we both ended up laughing so hard that the good kind of tears came. And hiccups, which made us laugh even harder.

Would that the Red and Blue parties, the black, white, brown, yellow, green and purple rainbow people could be as true to higher goals like friendship, and forgiveness, inclusiveness and inquisitiveness as five-year-olds, and let all the animosity flow, like water under the bridge. 

Got any good jokes?

Know anyone in Canada with an extra room to let for four years?

Wait until some Wednesday in 2020... hopefully, the progressive Left won't be left in the dust again.