The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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You’ve probably seen them too by now, eyes rolled back, heads lolling, hands at their sides fingers twitching, wandering aimlessly with no destination, no obvious direction. Their lips are moving but the only sounds aren’t speech, just incomprehensible mutterings, muted sighs, vague exhalations, an occasional stifled sob. Ashen faced, they seem stunned, shocked, survivors of some unseen catastrophe.

You think Zombies. But you know you’ve seen too much bad TV, too many derivative movies about the Undead. No, these are living people, people you know. If there are any people you know anymore.

These are the catatonics from last night’s horrorshow election, the folks who never dreamed their neighbors, their friends, their family members even would vote in … that man. That crass creepy cretin of a human being, the very incarnation of kitsch and excess, a braggart billionaire so lacking in noblesse oblige they can’t wrap their confused heads around the reality. Around ALL reality.

Who knows how long it will take to come down off those evil hallucinogens someone slipped in their Chablis while they were settling in for an enjoyable evening of election returns, canapes balanced on their napkined laps? Who knows when the earth will tilt back onto its proper axis? At the moment there are no more predictions. The unthinkable … yes, the unthinkable. And the impossibility of even trying.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a week. Maybe, if they could only get a flimsy handle on this, maybe … well, maybe never. The country they lived in is gone now. They will wander its barren landscape knowing they were always strangers in a strange land, a land inhabited by faces seemingly familiar, but only masks. Their homes are gone. Someone has changed the locks. The squatters. The new owners. For the unknowable future, they’re the new refugees, lost in America. Whatever you do, no matter how much you’d like to help, give them a wide berth. They’re beyond all that now.

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My fellow Americans, the day of reckoning is finally here! Today is Election Day in the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave. With the rest of the world watching, we proudly put our form of democracy on display as an example to follow. We show those totalitarians, those monarchies, those kleptocrats and commies how our model form of government could be theirs as well. How we have winnowed from 350 million citizens the two who can lead the Free World as president of the most powerful country in the history of mankind.

And tonight, the envelope please….

I know, you’ve had a belly full this past year. It’s been a long national nightmare that we never believed was possible, we never dreamed it could go this far, we can’t quite pinch ourselves to full wakefulness. President Donald Trump. I know, you can’t quite say it. You think: the man is a pig. The man is a bully, a womanizer, a philanderer, an ignorant arrogant egomaniac who campaigned only with his wife and kids and no political backers, a huckster whose claim to business savvy and deal making is a façade that covers multiple million dollar bankruptcies that he used to avoid, legally, paying taxes. He’s a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a fraud and a cheat. He’s a liar who doesn’t appear to believe he’s lying. When confronted with the facts he simply repeats the lie. He claims he will throw his opponent in jail if elected. He wants to cancel Saturday Night Live for skewering him. He bans reporters from his rallies if they work for a paper he considers unfair. Like the New York Times. He encourages violence at those same rallies, ridicules the handicapped, finds it disgusting if a Miss Universe contestant gains a few pounds, tells us he’ll sue the pants off the dozen or more women who accuse him of sexual harassment.

This is the man who will Make America Great Again. Who will ban Muslims from entering the country, who will build a Wall, who will renegotiate trade deals, cancel the Iranian nuclear pact, get tough with China. Who admires Putin and declares him a much better leader than Obama. And no, Russia has never — will never — invade Ukraine.

Tonight, my anxious Americans, we will put on display an America we never really acknowledged, the one we kept hidden in the closet. The dark room where we keep our Confederate flags, the KKK, hate crimes, lynchings, sexual abuse, police racism, corporate tax dodges, a widening divide between the rich and poor, minimum wage stagnation, immigration problems, all those embarrassing traits we lock behind that door. The America half of us want to make great again is the America of angry white folks, folks who fear a polyglot melting pot nation of different nationalities and color and religion, all united, all Americans, all hoping to have an equal opportunity in the land of the so-called free, the land of the scared.

I’d like to tell you our long national nightmare will finally be over tonight. That the healing can begin. But you know and I know too, the skeletons in the closet are out now. It’s not just Election Night. It’s Halloween. The spooks and the goblins and the demons are out in the open, during the daytime, in the light of scrutiny. If you think they’re going back into the shadows, think again. No matter who loses tonight … they’re the real winners.

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My parents, when us little sprouts were growing up, never made much of a fuss over us. If we got good grades, they nodded approvingly. And if we didn’t, they told us to buckle down and smarten up, school wasn’t some game. They never came to our sports events to watch their star kids play and we were glad they didn’t because, well, to be honest, we weren’t stars. We were just your basic kids, vanilla, ordinary, okay.

When they became grandparents, however, things changed. Their grandkids, my god, they were Einsteins, they were football stars, they were just all around Wows. My friends who have grandkids have those same kids, all of them the smartest, best looking, most talented brats you ever had the privilege to hear bragged about. I don’t know, maybe if I had kids, they’d be superheroes too. But I didn’t and I bet they wouldn’t be if I did.

When I look back at my childhood (okay, the early years, not the present years), I drifted through sandlot baseball games, marbles, some fights, some homemade soap box derby races, all the stuff we hoodlums did back in the halcyon days of Eisenhower’s America. I didn’t think I had to be a genius. Or a basketball star. Or a movie actor. My folks didn’t push us munchkins out into a competitive universe with a prescription for failure by convincing us we were God’s gift to the free world. We were encouraged to try stuff, everything from track and field to chess to debate clubs, but they didn’t come down and play soccer mom and get into fights with the coach or the parents of our opponents. They’d ask how it went and if we got our butts kicked, they said better luck next time. These weren’t life and death competitions.

I worry that we’re trying too hard now. Sure, we’d all like to think that the fruit that fell near the tree is special, the sweetest, the tastiest, the fastest growing, the most flowers. But I suspect we just set the kids up for disappointment. Ballet. Dropped out. Lacrosse. Never really liked it. Cheerleader. Couldn’t do a head stand. Choir. Had a tin ear. Academics. Got a C+. Life. Just normal.

My folks accepted normal. So did we. What they wanted for us was happiness. It’s not a bad wish. In their own hands-off way, they taught us how to get there.

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When the Flatheads got to the door of the South End Diner this morning, they were greeted by Anita’s handwritten placard:
No More Political Arguments
Until After the Election
No Exceptions!!

The vintage car guyz were flabbergasted. What’s it mean? they wanted to know. What about Freedom of Speech? Walter particularly wanted to know. Brenda was pouring the first rounds of coffee to about ten perplexed Flatheads. “We’re sick of it, all of us,” she explained. “Anita’s had a dose. She’s ready to close the diner until after next Tuesday if she has to.”

“Who does she think she is?” Walter demanded, waving his porcelain clay mug in a moving target for Brenda who finally grabbed his hand to hold the cup still. “She’s the owner, Walt, that’s who. No shoes, no shirt no service. You want breakfast, no more of your Trump talk.”

Jerry clapped his hands. “Okay with me, Walt. Maybe my appetite will come back.”

“What’ll we talk about instead,” Charlie moaned, only half serious. “How about cars?” Brenda suggested, starting now to take orders. “You’re a car club, not a political action committee.”

“Anita gonna ban that next?” Walter shouted, which brought Anita herself out from behind her register. Walter had his back to her and never saw the menu before it slapped across the back of his head, knocking his Make America Great Again ballcap onto the formica tabletop. “What the …?” he sputtered and turned to find Anita rearing back for another swat.

“Holy cripes, Anita,” he stuttered. “I’m just kidding.”

Anita whacked him anyway. “Jeez, Anita ….”

The rest of breakfast the boyz spent discussing the virtues of dual exhausts, twin carbs and rebored cylinders. Next week they’ll probably argue who stole the election. Or try, anyway ….

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Down at the salon the only talk under the dryers was the election. Oh, the storm of the decade got a little play, but like the wind itself, it came and went with barely a whimper. The election, though, swirled like a tornado, styling chair to styling chair, fueled further by every new appointment.

“I’ll just be glad when the whole thing is over,” Kate, the newest stylist at the Cut’nClip, sighed after Abby Jorgenson had stepped out the front door, saying as she left her dollar tip that she just didn’t know who she would vote for.

“Oh sweetie,” Ronald had said down by the sink as he washed Myrtle Martin’s graying hair, “you mean it’s a hard choice? Between the first woman president and a serial womanizer?”

“Take it easy, Ronald,” Myrtle cried, “you’re digging holes in my scalp.” “Sorry,” Ronald apologized, “but good Lord, I can’t imagine voting for a man with that HAIR! It’s so not natural.”

“You judge a man by his hair?” Marie on Chair #2 asked. “Oh sweetheart,” Ronald sniffed, toweling off Myrtle’s newly shampooed locks, “the boy is 100% phony. His hair, my god, it’s golden and the man is 70 years old. Like a Greek god.”

“Grecian Formula, maybe,” Sally said from Chair #1 and Ronald snorted. Becky Myers laughed as Sally hit her with a hot blast from her blow dryer. “Ronald, you’re a crackup,” she said. “What about Hillary? She changes hairstyles more than she changes pantsuits.”

“Omigod, isn’t that the truth,” Ronald squealed happily. “I’d be rich if she were my client, that’s the holy gospel. Think of the jobs that woman will create. Ten stylists standing by at the White House.”

“Five more on Air Force One,” Sally tossed in.

And so it goes at the Cut’nClip. After the election, maybe they can return to the usual gossip. We’ll all be thankful is all I can say.

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