[The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind] Super Tuesday?

I honestly haven't the foggiest freaking clue as to why today is considered "Super" Tuesday. I mean, yes. It's a good day for the democratic process since a bunch of states' primaries are today, and people are lining up to cast their beans in hopes of picking the person who we will then vote to be our next president.

To me, that just doesn't really smack of being super.

And, considering the candidates, it really doesn't seem super in any way whatsoever.

Anyway, right now, on this Super Tuesday, my biggest concern is trying to stay awake. Lack of sleep makes me care really little about who's winning what primary. I'm fed up, I'm tired, and I just don't give a bloody damn.

Aside from that, there's news in my life. I suppose it's good news.

My mother had triple bypass surgery last Sunday, and the surgery went well and she's convalescing in the Intensive Care Unit Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU. They're really fussy and protective about that sort of thing, I've found). So, she's doing pretty good.

It's hard though. There's a heap of worry, and it's amazingly difficult to see a woman who suffered through the hellish upbringing of seven headstrong, maniacal sons trapped in a hospital bed with no end of plumbing and electronics connected to her. And, seeing her there, I find myself struck with a ridiculous urge to repay a favor from very long ago.

When I was, I think, seven or eight years old, I was laid out with a really nasty case of salmonella, and I was rushed to the hospital, quarantined and pretty much locked away to the point where my doctor would do nothing more than stick his head in the door and ask how I was doing rather than run the risk of being contaminated. In fact, the only person who would step into my room was a brutal nurse who made a hobby out of yanking out my I.V. and jabbing it into a new vein several times a day for no reason whatsoever (she claimed I moved too much, and I claimed she was a sadistic Nazi wench who honed her nursing skills and compassion in a concentration camp somewhere).

Nonetheless, to pass the time in my infirmity, I had a lot of books to read and whatnots, but one simple gift occupied most of my time. It was a furious and frustrating gizmo that would either drive me insane or turn me into a gifted artist with a gifted mind and the motor skills of a freakin' Ninja.

It came from my mother, and it was an Etch-a-Sketch.

Unfortunately, in the month I spent in that hospital room, the only talent I could master on that damned thing was the drawing of a fairly decent circle. It was rarely perfect, and sometimes it was egg-shaped, and other times it simply looked like an egg with no end of birth-defects. But, on rare occasions, I could draw a circle, and I would set the thing beside me on my nightstand proudly until the Nazi Nurse would shoot her way in, grab it, give it a shake and erase my effort followed by the ubiquitous pin-cushion treatment and demands that I not move my arm an inch and constant threats of restraints.

She was a ruthlessly evil bitch, and I hope she died a slow, painful death being devoured by a flesh-eating bacteria with poor table manners.

Anyway, that's what I would like to get my mother while she's couped up in that hospital bed: An Etch-a-Sketch. I don't know if I'd be returning any favors, and I seriously doubt she would ever even use it or fully understand the message behind it. Plus, when she gave me one, it was way back in the day when this city only had four television channels to watch (and hey! The Etch-a-Sketch looked like a TV). Now, she's got a freakin' five disc DVD player in her room. So, an Etch-a-Sketch really wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.

So, that's sort of why things here have been somewhat distracted and slow, and the the updates are even more infrequent than they usually are. Things have been busy with running back and forth to the hospital, I've been cooking dinners for my father to keep him from existing on nothing more than a steady diet of cheap bourbon and fried chicken from the Chancery; I've been watering plants, bringing in mail, shoveling and shoveling and just trying to keep what little bits I can from crumbling into chaos. Writing just hasn't been able to fit into that chaos.

To make matters worse, there's more snow on the way, and it's going to be a big damn storm with an estimated four to nine inches of heavy, wet nonsense. So, it's more shoveling. I can't take any more shoveling. I need napalm. Explosives.

I think that's what America needs to do. We need to turn our enemies angst into something positive. I think we need to phone bin Laden and his cohorts in Al Qaeda to tell them that this white stuff that's falling from the sky and piling upon our sidewalks and roadways isn't snow, but it's freedom! Yes. Freedom Flakes! Homeland Security Slush! It's the dandruff of Jesus!

Americans live on it. We worship snow. Look at the X-Games on ESPN! We love our snow! Without snow, we wouldn't have America! Do you hear me Osama! If you want to send a message where I'll feel it most, grab a shovel and clear my sidewalks!

Seems like a plan to me.

-DP

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Posted By Dan to The Wisdom of a Distracted Mind at 2/05/2008 11:31:00 AM