I’d love to be quarantined from political wrangling

I don’t have the ability to be a politician. And the season has already started for the race for the White House. It’s political opinions to the left of you, political opinions to the right of you. Into the valley rode the mirage of wannabes. There is no way to get away from it.

I just don’t get that whole campaigning thing. I find it difficult to imagine standing on the back of a truck with a bullhorn, calling people “folks”; it probably would come out as “forks.” It sure would expose my lack of transparency, which should never happen this early.  Everyone knows that should come much later in the campaign, or after you’ve been elected.

I wouldn’t be able to roll up my sleeves, which is a required photo op, so that I could pretend to be down with the people. By now my skin is so scaly and wrinkled that it would scare the voting public right onto canoes, so they could paddle themselves across the Atlantic to a place like Greenland.

Oh, I could sling a Martha Stewart bag over my shoulder, but the forks, I mean folks, might see through the fact that I have a label sticking out of what actually is a knockoff Fendi purse. The real deal costs as much as the yearly budget for a Third World country.

And then there are the civilized great discussions about rights – the right to vote, the right to bare arms (although why being able to go sleeveless is in the Constitution is beyond me), the right to free speech, the right to keep your left-turn blinker on from your driveway to the store, and the right to wear white after Labor Day.

Personally, the most important right to me is the right to take a number. Americans want to be waited on in a first-come, first-served manner. It’s like that commercial with the former NFL player getting his number called at the deli and going into a dance, “No. 44, that’s me, gonna get some cold cuts today, woohoo!”

We demand numbers at supermarkets, in the DMV, on parking spaces, on telemarketers’ lists, in fact, any place where there is a line. It is our right.  It has even invaded our healthcare system.

A couple of months ago, I went to a local healthcare facility to have my blood taken. It was late in the afternoon, so after I checked in, I took a seat in an empty waiting room. I know, that was a new experience, 40 empty seats. Anyway, it was a large room and kind of nice to sit there with my book by myself. But obviously this was a cutting-edge health facility, knowing my right to a number, because a technician came out, took one glance around the room and yelled, “Number 77.” 

Not only was I the only one in the room, but my number wasn’t 77. After looking around the place, he could have just told me to take a booth, but he knew my rights and continued to call a number. You’ve got to respect that.

So, as we plod along through the political season, you have to ask yourself who would want this kind of job.

As you distract yourself during this quarantine with television, coupled with breaking news over this virus every five minutes, we’ve come to realize maybe the debates weren’t so bad after all. But then again, we do have that right to not know what we are talking about. Or not. Stay well.