Saturday, December 9, 2000

 

12:30 p.m. Oh gloom! Oh doom! Dang, but I was feeling good about things just a few hours ago. Watching the TV, watching the count proceed, thinking that maybe we (Democratic we) had a chance to pull ahead and if not, at least know for certain that they (Republican they) didn't steal this election by ramming it through the courts.

So, as of a few minutes ago, the Supreme Court, the Highest Court in the Land, has stopped the counting. And I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I do. I'm going to get sick and develop a flu if I keep taking this thing personally, but I do. It seems to defy all logic.

Now, were I to talk to a rabid Republican (and the boys who work here in my library Monday through Friday are as rabid as you can be and still be healthy), they would say that this new ruling is only fair. That those votes are being mishandled and the chads are flying all over the room and people are wish-voting for Gore, thus: stealing the election. And the boys in the front room are good boys. In fact, all the Republicans I know are good people and we laugh and work well together unless the name Clinton comes up and they turn mean and I turn cowardly.

Don't particularly like confrontation, especially if it requires me to yell. Don't have big lungs. In fact, I have very little lungs. Without benefit of a confirming X-ray, I have nonetheless concluded that my lungs are substantially smaller than the average due to the fact that I was born and raised in an oil-refining town.

If you were to go there today (Chester, PA, with its sister city of Marcus Hook -- what a cool name, in retrospective perspective), you would cough and sputter and literally have to hold your nose. Unless, of course, they've cleaned the place up.

But if they haven't, and if the Sun Oil Refinery is still puffing noxious black smoke from those long cigarillo towers and burning off the byproducts via that familiar perpetual flame lighting up the night sky with an oily rainbow of smoke ... well ... those of us born into that air compensated by not getting too excited about breathing.

Small shallow breaths. Walking instead of jogging. Taking a slow, measured pace, ideally in the direction of the nearest turnpike and you know the rest.

1:43 p.m. Igor is out jogging. He's got the big lungs in this family. It's what he does when he's upset. It's what he did on election night when the FOX guy who shares Jeb's name called the election for his other cousin.

I, meanwhile, am back to cleaning the bathroom. It's what I do when I'm mad. For some reason, scrubbing tile and wiping strange residue from the surface of things calms me down. Maybe the perfumed but nonetheless noxious fumes of the cleaning chemicals makes me feel safe and secure, as if I'm back in familiar terrirory. Almost home again.