Irresolution

Time for those wicked resolutions again. The media is full of them. Friends reference them. Even the spam in my inbox offers to help me make and keep them—for a price.

Inasmuch as I have no resolve on hand—I have to buy it at Walmart, and I am not going in there—I’m not going to make any resolutions that I don’t think will be keep-able. And here they are:

• I will not watch a single reality show (but I will not miss any true crime programs—completely different concepts, believe me).
• I will love my granddaughters with abandon.
• I will let my cats bully me three days a week (down from 7).
• I will read fifty books.
• I will clean my office at least once. (Up from, um, never)?
• I will exercise twice a week (down from five, in case you thought me heroic).
• I will leave the salt off my margaritas. Might substitute Mrs. Dash.
• I will write in my journal once a week (up from when I find where I left it and write in it before I lose it again).
• I will curse only when provoked (down from whenever I damn well want to).
• I will buy ten pairs of shoes (down from thirty).
• I will continue to ignore traditional country music.
• I will continue to get all my news from the Daily Show.
• I will not “Tweet.” Or “Twitter.” Or “shoot” anyone an email.
• I will make it my job to watch Donald Trump’s hair to see if anything moves.
• I will watch Sarah Palin’s mouth to see if anything intelligent comes from it.
• I will continue to lobby for Eric Clapton’s elevation to rock ‘n roll Sainthood.
• I will remember the oppressed and those who keep them that way.

And that’s about all I can stand to think about today.

Don’t give them what they want . . .

Teaching creative writing is usually a joy, but not always. The difficulty arises when I try to articulate the reality of writing versus the myths of writing.

That struggle can be encapsulated in one Continuing Education class I taught several years ago. It was called “So You Want to Be a Writer?” It wasn’t a creative writing class, per se, but the students who enrolled in it were either already producing creative work or hoped to do so.

The course was a little lecture and a great deal of Q and A. Participants wanted to know how long it would take them to see publication, how big an advance they could expect on a first book, how much money had I made writing, why must they revise, why worry about an audience, how would they find an agent, what if I send my book out and two publishers want it, and many others.

In every case I disappointed them.

• I don’t know when you’ll be published.
• Advance? What advance?
• My last royalty check on my first book was two years ago, and it was for $2.31; if my second book had stayed in print four or five years longer, I might have made back the money I spent on promotion.
• The only good writing is re-writing—there are no “good” first drafts, just drafts with potential.
• An audience is a necessary part of your creative writing experience. That’s who would give you the money if there was any money to be had.
• Finding an agent is about as hard as finding a publisher.
• That will happen at roughly the same time as the phrase “honest politician” ceases to be an oxymoron—in other words, don’t hold your breath.

You probably won’t be surprised to know that by the sixth week I had four students remaining of the original 15. And that class never “made” again, at least not with me as the instructor.

Teaching a creative writing class often entails answering those same questions, sometimes explicitly, sometimes obliquely, over the span of 16 weeks. It’s harder, much harder, to break their little hearts because I become closer to them over that period of time. And frankly, some of them don’t see any reason to write without the possibility of seeing their work in print.

You can imagine my relief at learning that my job as a creative writing instructor doesn’t necessarily include answering many of those questions.

As part of my MFA program, I will take several classes in pedagogy. In preparation for that, I’m reading one of the assigned texts, Teaching Creative Writing to Undergraduates, by Stephanie Vanderslice and Kelly Ritter. In the first few pages, the authors state the following:

[When teaching creative writing], you don’t have to be a gatekeeper. All you have to be is a teacher, a guide, the first . . . in a long line of guides, showing your students the way. You are not here to supervise a career or to create the next Pulitzer Prize winner. You are also not here, in the parlance of television culture, to vote any of your students off the writing island. You are here to do a defined job—introduce the craft and criticism of writing poetry and fiction—and demonstrate how this is done in a college course. That’s all. (8)

Oh! What beautiful words those are!

I have always felt inadequate in the “gatekeeping” role, but because that’s what students seemed to want—the nuts and bolts of publication—that’s what I gave them. As much as I loathe Dr. Phil (don’t look at me like that—if he knew me he wouldn’t like me either), I feel compelled to say, “What was I thinking?”

As I reflect on it now, I realize that if I gave the majority of my students what they “want,” my composition classes would write no papers but spend class time playing “Angry Birds” on their ITouches or posting their status (boorrred) on Facebook (or worse, posting messages to me WHILE THEY’RE IN CLASS); nevertheless, I would issue A’s to all and sundry. My literature students would never have to read, or at least they would never have to read anything outside of the Twilight series or the Bible. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) These students, too, would receive A’s.

But I don’t have to give them what they want. I just have to give them what they need to become competent writers in a world where we often have to do what we don’t want to do, and we don’t even get A’s for it.

Wanted: Little girl with bean stuck in her ear

In the last several days I graded papers for four classes, all of which involved a great deal of writing. As much as I love my students, near the end I felt as if I would rather kiss a snake on the lips than get within ten feet of another ungraded essay. Now the last one is done.

So that’s one step in the end of semester grading process. After that, I emailed all students in all classes and strongly urged them to check their scores before I entered the final grades. Once that’s over, I logged on to the program in which grades are entered. Halfway through that process, the program decided I’d had enough time and logged me out. I logged back in and entered grades for eighty students. Then I went back into the electronic grade book—different log-on—and loaded each class individually to a part of Blackboard called My Content Collection. Then I emailed all of them to an office where people are waiting anxiously because they have a deadline, too. I usually have to do this part several times before I get the permissions right and send them to the correct email address.

After that I waited for the trickle of students who wanted to negotiate their grades. Once I issued a “No,” “No,” and a “You will not die. Don’t you know the world is run by C students?” I was actually, officially through with the semester. The sense of freedom I have then is a lot like the one I had when I first got married. No, not that somebody finally married me, thank you very much. That was just an unfortunate incident. Just kidding!

But I digress. The first couple of years after I married TBL, I babysat five days a week to make a little extra money. I cared for two little girls and a toddler boy. The boy and the youngest girl were very little trouble and I actually had fun. The oldest girl did things like peel the wallpaper off the wall in the playroom, smear her face and that of her sister with my makeup, and try to flush her shoes down the toilet. On one memorable occasion, she was in the playroom and I was in the hallway. I heard her say, “Uh oh.” That never boded well.

I really didn’t want to see whatever it was, but I went into the playroom and knelt in front of her.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“It’s in my ear,” she whispered.

“What is?”

She leaned closer and cupped her mouth with her hands. “I thought it would come out of my mouth,” she said, still whispering.

I turned her face to the side so I could look into her ear. There, pushed so far into her ear it was barely visible, was an uncooked pinto bean.

I won’t go into the details of how we solved that sticky wicket, but it’s just one example of fixes she got herself, and, by extension, me, into. She was a bright, curious little girl, and if thought it, she did it. Consequently, at 5:10 on Friday afternoons, after all the kids had been picked up, there was joy in Mudville. I don’t mean a sigh of relief, but a whooping, air-punching, jumping on the couch, end-zone-happy-dance kind of joy.

That’s kind of how I feel now. Except I’m too tired to do my happy dance. But I’m free at last.

Oh. Wait. Now I have to get Christmas cards sent, buy gifts, make it through Christmas day, read two books, and get all four of my online classes completely ready, including one I’m designing from scratch. I have to do all that before next week when I go to OKC as part of the requirements for my MFA. I’ll be there ten days. Except for the one day right smack dab in the middle when I drive back to Tulsa to attend a mandatory, all-day, all-faculty meeting, after which I return to OKC.

Crap. Where’s a little girl with a bean in her ear when you need her?

 

 

If I could just stay on the porch

Every semester, I stand before a class of freshmen, and I can’t say who’s more frightened. I’m sure they look at me with every bit as much trepidation as I do them, and maybe more. After all, I have the grade book, and for many, my class is the first of their college careers. For more than a few, it is one of the most dreaded—freshman composition. The syllabus might as well say Introduction to Drawing and Quartering or Beheading 101.

I didn’t set out to teach, but once you’ve got a master’s degree in English, what are you gonna do? Once the idea was presented to me, I liked it a lot, and I knew that if I did teach, I wanted to do it in the same community college where I started. And I had big ideas. I wanted to change lives the way others—almost always teachers—had changed mine.

While I’ve had a few success—and by success I mean a student I taught actually learned what I was trying to teach—I doubt that I’ve changed any lives. Still, I haven’t given up the hope that I might.

One of the first things I impress upon my students is that I’m pretty much a one trick pony. I can write. Period. I’ve proven time and again that I’m geographically retarded as well as mathematically and scientifically challenged. It’s harder to convince them of this than you might think. So I tell them about blowing myself off the front porch.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, before charcoal became a carcinogen, I was trying to get a fire going on the grill. Rain was on the way, so I placed the grill on the porch. The measly fire I’d started went out—again—so I poured about half a container of starter fluid all over the charcoal, closed the lid and the vent on the lid, and waited a few minutes. When I thought the fluid had done its job, I opened the vent and dropped a match in.

Well, people, let’s just say it was ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly. I narrowly missed a crepe myrtle and ended up on the gravel driveway. It wasn’t very far, but I’ll tell you for a dead-dog certainty that being blown any distance by—what do you call it? Combustion? Stupidity?—is scary.

In addition to telling them how deficient I am in multiple areas, I am sure to let them know that however hard writing may be for them, the fact that I can do it does not make me in any way superior to them, and that their proficiencies are every bit as important as my one ability. I’m continually amazed at the talent surrounding me in a classroom—young people for whom math, science, the secret workings of cars and computers and bodies are no mystery. They understand myriad concepts and processes that give me a headache to think about. I admire them for their accomplishments, however undeveloped their writing ability may be.

Yeah, I know. Everyone needs to be able to communicate orally and in writing, and I often work hundred-hour weeks to see that my students do so. However, there are days when you just need somebody to keep you from blowing yourself off the freaking porch.

Rise and shine

This will surprise nobody who knows me: I hate mornings. I hate the light, the cold, the noise—all things morning shouldn’t be. I hate the residue of sad dreams, the stiffness that time brings. I want to be a happy riser—yes, I do—but it will never happen.

If I ever get up willingly, humming, bright-eyed, assume that aliens have abducted me and left a not-me in my place.

There is no justice in this world. Where is it written that morning is the time to rise? Why not mid-morning, noon, evening? I never really get cooking till seven p.m. or so, anyway. Then BAM! It’s time for bed. That fairly well bites, does it not?

Too much sleep is blamed for too many things.

• Sluggishness of mind and body
• Lack of ambition
• Depression

it goes on and on. And maybe it does cause all that. But I’m not complaining about the amount  of sleep I get, just when I have to stop doing it. And for that matter, how I have to stop doing it. Alarm clocks are instruments of the devil, designed by morning people, who don’t even need them, because morning people leap from the bed like they were shot from cannons.

And speaking of morning people—oh, my God. Could they be more annoying? I think not.

Morning people display this sort of entitlement, as if they’re members of whatever political party YOU aren’t, meaning they swagger, they boast, they tell the whole world that they are the possessors of truth, justice, and the by-God American way.

Ha! Nothing could be further from the truth. And you know what? No, don’t guess. I’m going to tell you. Just between you and me, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were the ones who stole the Christ out of Christmas. Why not? They’re clearly up before the rest of us, and according to their own propaganda, they are more energetic, more ambitious, and absolutely superior to their unfortunate opposites.

All this is so much blather. It begs the question of why people can’t be tolerant of my body clock. Why should I have to adjust to theirs? After all, these morning people should know—since they are all no doubt Bible thumping, scripture quoting, public-praying knuckleheads—that night people were here first. That’s right. We were here first. Otherwise, why did God have to say, “Let there be light?” Huh? Answer me that.

I so wish all the above was true. If it were, it would perfectly explain all my miserable mornings.

However, if it really was true, I would feel far less virtuous at having greeted the day at 6 a.m. 32 times in the last 16 weeks. That’s right. Every Tuesday and Thursday for four months I rolled out of my nice, warm bed at 6 a.m. and was at my desk by 7:15 to prepare for my classes.

I did lie down under my desk twice, but I just wanted to see what it looked like from that position.

Writing about writing and the perils therein

When I set out to blog, I just knew I’d write about writing. I’ve since discovered that I don’t have a lot to say on the subject. I’d far rather write than write about writing, if that makes any sense. That doesn’t mean I never will, but it seems a bit circular to me. To writing about writing seems as if I’m avoiding writing, while writing about nearly anything else seems to be—well, writing.

What would my choices be? Explaining how I write? Who would care? Criticizing how someone else writes? If I was criticizing someone who isn’t a professional, I would be tacky. If I was criticizing the work of a professional, I’ve got a lot of nerve. I guess I could just give my opinion, but, again—who would care?

On the other hand, I guess my process and opinions are as good as anyone’s, and anyone who isn’t interested can go watch YouTube. So here it is. Just so I don’t shoot myself in the foot to begin with, we’ll call this my first piece about writing. It may be my last, but I don’t want to be hasty.

My process is this: Something piques my interest. I think about it a while. Then I talk about how I ought to write about it. This might go on for days. Or weeks or months or years.  Just depends. Finally, I decide I’ve got a handle on it and know just what I’m going to say. I sit down at my computer and create a new, blank document.

Suddenly, I remember I don’t have any clean underwear, and I have to go to work tomorrow. What if I didn’t have on clean underwear and I had a wreck? So I gather up all my underwear and go downstairs and throw it in the washer. On my way back upstairs it occurs to me that it would be very cool if there was no wrong side out to underwear. I have a lot of trouble with that. I always tell TBL that if a body washes up on the banks of the Arkansas River and her underwear is on wrong side out (or even sideways—don’t look at me like that. Who hasn’t put one leg through a leg opening and one through the waist opening and been unaware of it?). But I tell him that if a woman washes up on the bank with her underwear on wrong, TBL should hurry up and go identify me.

Then I realize I’m just stalling. I pat myself on the back for that insight. So I go back to the computer and sit down. I see one of the cats out of the corner of my eye and remember the upstairs litter boxes need to be cleaned. I’ll write much better if they’re clean. I run upstairs, clean them out, and before I get back to the second floor four of my five cats are busy making sure the boxes don’t stay clean. The fifth is no doubt somewhere peeing on something that’s mine. He hates me.

I take the bags of cat-do to the garbage can, but it’s in the street because it’s trash day. I have to go to the curb and get it. I toss the bags in and drag the can to its place near the back porch. I go back in the house and notice that the kitchen garbage needs to be emptied. I take that bag out, come back in, and start for the stairs. Oh, crap. TBL for some reason thinks I should replace the bag if I take out the trash.

I find the trash bags beneath the sink, but I also happen to notice the spray-on silver polish I bought ten years ago in Wyoming. Dang. I can’t ever wear my silver jewelry because it’s all tarnished. I forget the bag, take the silver polish upstairs and pull out all my silver and turquoise jewelry. Across the hall I see that my office door is open.

Oh, man. I was writing. I leave the jewelry and the spray on my bathroom sink and go back to the computer. I sit down and realize I’ve forgotten what I was going to write about. Man. It’s a wonder I get anything done around here with so much else fighting for my attention.

So, I decided to write about writing. Specifically, about my process. More specifically, all of the above.

Till next time!

What I’m Reading 1

Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer, is exactly the kind of thing I avoid. All I know about war is I’m agin it. However, being a card-carrying pacifist doesn’t make me stupid, and I’m not idealistic enough to think that we can all play nice together. I just don’t want to read books or watch movies about it. And football. I’m agin it, too, so until Pat Tillman’s death, I knew nothing of his life.

As I learned in Krakauer’s book, Tillman turned down a lucrative contract in order to become an Army Ranger. While in Afghanistan, he was shot and killed by American troops, and although all parties agree it was not intentional, the errors and misjudgments that led up to his death would be ridiculous had they not ended in such tragedy.

Krakauer makes it clear that in the heat of battle even the best make mistakes, but he spares no official, be it military or civilian, in the illumination of the misconduct following Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire.

After Tillman’s death, the actions of Army commanders, aided and abetted by members of the Bush administration, bordered on the criminal as they went to extraordinary lengths to cover up the fratricide and use Tillman as a propaganda tool, an eventuality he had feared. Army regulations were flouted when Tillman’s clothing and notebooks were burned. In addition, he was fast-tracked for a posthumous Silver Star, which, as Krakauer shows, was a fraud. Members of his unit were ordered to remain silent, even though they served every day with his brother, Kevin. Even part of Tillman’s body disappeared.

Krakauer used Tillman’s journals, thousands of redacted documents, and interviews with Tillman’s family, friends, and comrades-in-arms in writing this book, and his prose is, as always, lyrical and precise.  A lot of reviews have said he could have written the story with a hundred fewer pages, but I’m assuming they meant leave out everything but the events after Tillman’s induction into the army.  While I do think the book could have used some tightening, the descriptions of Tillman’s life before his enlistment are part of what made the book so heartbreaking and intense. Krakauer’s deft portrayal of Pat Tillman as a man of great principle and honor, one who endeavored at all times to do the right thing, makes his death and the actions surrounding it all the more appalling.

While reading it didn’t make me any more in favor of war or football, I feel like a better person for having read it.

A big old sack of dead cats

Here is how I deal with who I am and what I’ve been.

I think a great deal more about God and the nature of God, about the state of my soul, at least in the way I define soul, than one might suppose, given my behavior and potty mouth. I’ve searched for peace longer and harder than most people I know, partly because for a long time I only thought I was looking for peace.  I’d never find that until I dealt with something I couldn’t even articulate back then. I called it lunacy, sickness, sadness, fear, brokenness, damage, anger, sin, no more than I deserved (I was going to say just deserts/desserts but whichever I used, if it was wrong it would just make ya’ll laugh and lose the thread).

The people-fixers told me there was an app for that—that app was pills. They eased the panic, anxiety, and depression that kept me from thinking clearly about what I needed. They helped me set the cornerstone that someday would someday be the basis of a whole person. They leveled the playing field for me, helped me start to—oh, crap, this is so Dr. Phil—start taking care of me from time to time.  I still didn’t know what the root of my instability was. Strangely enough, I figured it out at a conference.

 

Someone had been trying to get something going with me for way longer than a man with any pride would have. I think I exercised a great deal of verbal acuity in saying “no” in a way that did not say “I would rather eat frog innards than even kiss you, much less—” well, you know. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I just wanted him to go the hell away. He started in again during happy hour, which is probably the wrong time to talk to me about things that irritate me.

I was on my third Margarita and about my tenth “I’m married. I don’t screw around. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror,” when he popped up with “I don’t do guilt.”

Ordinarily I would say the man wasn’t smart enough to make me think about much, but “I don’t do guilt” struck a chord. I long thought that guilt was the way God kept us in line, and if you weren’t weighted down with it, you weren’t living right. I also thought God was a man who looked like Santa Claus and had the temperament of an abused Rottweiler. He was hunkered down around the corner, waiting for me to screw up so he could bring the hammer down, only I didn’t have to actually screw up, and the hammer wasn’t really a hammer, but guilt, along with all the things that accompany it—depression, sadness, self-loathing.

It would be bad enough if guilt was only something visited upon me. It wasn’t. It didn’t function only as a noun. It was also a direct object. I did guilt. I REALLY did guilt. I looked for guilt. I took it when it wasn’t mine to take. Fifteen years in a fundamentalist church had given me lots of practice.  I had subconsciously chosen the strictest, most unbending denomination I could find that required neither burka, bun, nor snake-handling. A girl can only go so far. I draw the line at unflattering headgear and hair-dos, and slimy things, too—my ex-husband not withstanding.

Even though my choice of places to worship, or whatever it was I did, lay under my cognitive radar, I know me, and if I was going to do something, I would by God be perfect at it, and if I wasn’t, I would accept as much guilt, would do as much guilt, as it took to find perfection.

And so it went. The road really does go on forever when you’re working on your own self-destruction. I worked at it full time, too—trying to be as bad as I thought I was. Not so anyone would notice—I would never cause a scene. But to stop, I had to let go of religion. So I did. But then I felt guilty because everybody knows God lives in a church. If I didn’t go to church, where would I find God? And that’s where it stood for many years.

That’s the short version, according to me. Other people’s version is like all of history—half bullshit and written totally by those who think they have all the marbles.

I finally realized I was going to carry around this sack of dead cats for freaking ever if I didn’t make peace with God. That had to happen. Screw fundamentalism and the self-righteous horse it rode in on. If I wanted to live, I had to know a god that wasn’t confined to a building, wasn’t some personified figure with a bag full of whup-ass just for me. I needed a god more like the spirit that hovered over the waters, if not in the beginning, then just at times when the waters needed some hovering. I needed a god who was shapeless and formless, who was everywhere at once, but probably not in the Wal-Mart parking lot waiting to find me a good parking space.

I needed a god who was compassionate, slow to anger, and constantly shaping me with unfailing love. I needed a god who knew my weaknesses and knew also that my only solace would be the tender mercies that emanate from whatever and wherever “God” is.

I can’t say that I “discovered” God (although I do have a magnet that says, “I found Jesus! He was behind the sofa the whole time!) because God was always there. What I can say is that the dead cats in that bag fell away one by one until only the tattered bag was left.

I’m keeping that. You know. Just in case.

 

Oh, s**t! It’s still the &*%# season

Hey. Which way did they go?

So I was flipping through channels waiting for a commercial to end on another station. I accidentally landed on a channel I never, ever watch because it makes my head want to explode. I was there for about 45 seconds because one of my cats flew by chasing another one and knocked the remote out of my hand. It slid under the coffee table so I had to feel around under there and get it.

During those 45 seconds, what do you think the subject was? No, don’t guess. I’m going to tell you. The subject was the varmints who took the “Christ” out of “Christmas.” And I didn’t even know it was gone. Shame on me. We’ve got to find it. If we don’t, all kinds of bad things might happen.

Without it, thousands of people would be without jobs. I don’t know why. Wendy’s is hiring, isn’t it?

Without it, the number of uninsured would hit an all-time high.  Serves them right. They ought to go get jobs. See above.

Without it, football and basketball coaches would molest young boys. And deny it. Well, what are those poor, beleaguered coaches going to do? Accept responsibility?

Without it, we might trip and fall into a war in which we spend nearly 300 billion dollars and lose over 2,000 members of the military. But hey. The other guys started it.

Without it, Congress could become an embarrassment. Oops. Sorry. Can’t unring that bell.

Without it, louts would rule, and the First Lady would be booed at a sporting event. Her own fault. What would she be doing in public, anyway?

Without it, the President would be forced to prove he was born in this country. Oh, wait. He’s BLACK. Of COURSE he has to prove he was born here.

Without it, 15 million children would live in poverty. FFFTT. Poverty. That’s a myth invent by deadbeats.

Without it, religious groups would protest at military funerals. Well, somebody’s got to do it.

Without it, interracial couples would be barred from attending certain churches. The Bible probably says that somewhere.

Without it, homosexuals would be beaten, tied to a fence, and left to die on a cold Wyoming night. But then, he shouldn’t have chosen that lifestyle.

I can’t go on. I feel faint. I might have to lie down for a bit. Who knows what might happen if we don’t find the dirty dogs that stole the Christ out of Christmas? What if those same outlaws steal the Han out of Hanukkah, or the Kwa out of Kwanza?

Maybe the ones who stole the Christ out of Christmas are the same ones who carted America off. I keep hearing that we need to take it back.

I’ll swan. It’s a regular epidemic.

With all due respect . . . not

Who would be so uncouth as to boo Michelle Obama? I’m not going to say it because they know who they are and they know what they did. They shamed us, all of us.

Michelle Obama is the First Lady, the wife of the President of the United States. She deserves our respect just as her husband does. And if we have not the character to respect the man, we should at least respect the office.

Some of those who showed a lack of respect are simply ignorant and do only what those around them do. Perhaps some were raised with wolves. Or maybe some of them watched and listened to too much of the drivel that passes for “news.” Or, just maybe, they are simply imitating the people we put in office.

The political climate for the last two years is the worst I can remember. When I voted for congressmen, senators, and yes, the president, I voted for public servants, people who had the best interest of the country at heart. Whether my candidate won or lost was immaterial, because the simple act of being a candidate is a statement that a man or woman wishes to do the best thing for constituents—all constituents, not those of a particular political persuasion, not those who look like them or talk like them. ALL the constituents.

I have seen nothing of the kind. We have been treated to spectacle after spectacle of nastiness, ruthless in-fighting, spiteful comments, hissy fits, and just plain bad manners. These  brats in big-boy pants—or dresses, as the case may be—seem to have forgotten who pays their salaries, who provides their insurance, and who guarantees that their retirement will be comfortable.

We do. We who are less well-paid, we who are uninsured, and we who will never be able to retire. Why do we do this? Is it because the recipients are worthy? Seriously? Is it because they would do the same for us? Are you kidding? Is it because we know that when we have fallen low they will be there to pick us up? OK. That’s just crazy talk.

We do it because we hope desperately that these men and women will eventually forget their power struggles, forget who’s black, who’s white, who’s gay, who’s straight, who looked cross-eyed at them, and do the job we elected them to do. When that finally happens, they’ll deserve our respect. Until then, we’ll behave like the men and women of character we are—and we’ll respect the offices to which we elected them.