Letterman for Senate

My mother is relieved now that the mid-term election is over.

Here's why: She's tired of all the commercials that smothered the TV screen and interrupted her sleep. That's because the TV is to her what a warm bottle is to an infant, what a sedative is to an adult, what a fifth of vodka is to an alcoholic: a way to nod off.

Her sleep comes in fits and starts; she's never really been great at it. She once wondered aloud if she had "sleep apathy." You know, indifference to slumber. She meant apnea, and she doesn't have it.

My feeling about her fitful sleep is that it results from her mind constantly firing on all cylinders, even if her words sometimes get left behind. There are things to worry about, after all: the grandkids who are new drivers, a rent increase on her apartment, a higher cable bill, the return of Donald Trump.

She's not alone on that last one. But he wasn't on the ballot Nov. 8. "Letterman" was, the guy who beat Dr. Oz for Pennsylvania's Senate seat, not the late-night host. She likes Espadido, er Shapiro, who is the state's new governor, not a snack chip. 

And what is "frankling" anyway? Hint: It involves using high-pressure fluid to shatter underground rock formations and extract oil or gas. 

Right, fracking.

In the heat of the mid-term race, she was only slightly less interested than she had been in 2020. And before that? Well, she begged to be forgiven for paying more attention to five children than to politics. Kids can consume you like that, and you can't vote them out in an election. 

Now that the race is over, my mother will return her attention, in part, to our government, like asking me what the filibuster is or why the president can't make things better with just the stroke of a pen. 

And inflation? It gets her in the checkout line, like when she recently asked me the price of a slick magazine about the late Betty White.  

I told her it was $14.99, and her reaction prompted one of my favorite phrases of hers, as if she hadn't expressed interest in the overpriced product to begin with: "They can keep it."

It brings to mind another saying of hers, one we satirized in reciting the list of her part-time jobs through the years, about 70 of them, and the demands she made of her employers, as if she were doing them a favor by showing up.

"I can't work on days that begin with T and I need the whole summer off. If they don't like it, they can lump it." In other words, deal with it.

How's that for job apathy?


YouTube

  

      






 




 

 





     


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The kitchen table

Image
    I love to watch when my mother gets together with her best friend, and not just because they met on the day I was born in 1960.  I was Mom's first child; Dolores had just had her second. Mom went through a difficult labor, Dolores sailed through hers. So she showed up at my worn-out mother's hospital bedside with a cigarette in her hand ready to chat. (You could smoke in hospitals then, and new mothers rested in maternity wards with long rows of beds.)  As mom talked with Dolores, they realized they both lived on the same street of new rowhomes in Northeast Philadelphia: the 3300 block of Morning Glory Road, a future microcosm of the Baby Boom.  She lived at 3333, we were at 3359. Existentially speaking, I don't think you can find a better example of the human condition than two friends who have known each other for 65 years. Who raised eight children between them, stretched a dollar like it was taffy, lived 26 houses apart and did all the things that went w...
Read more

The birthday pageant

Image
  It takes a village to raise a child, Hillary Clinton once wrote, appropriating an old proverb thought to have African origins.  Here's a twist on that: It takes a village to praise a 90-year-old. Especially when that nonagenarian  believes in her own specialness. "I think I'm entitled to a party, aren't I? she asked recently. "It's not every day you turn 90."  Let's face it: By the time you're a nonagenarian, you have a accrued a good number of relatives and friends. So my siblings and I threw a surprise party for mom with about 35 of them. Despite her own suggestion of a party, she walked in the door not entirely shocked but a little intimidated by the crowd that met her angling for hugs and "look here" photos. As is her nature, she greeted guests wearing a gold sash with the number 90 on it. She sashayed around like a senior beauty pageant winner.      Two days later, she couldn't wait to tell me about some of her gifts: a Bette ...
Read more

Hell or high water

Image
  We were going to the presidential inauguration, mom and I. Not his, hers. That was the goal when I stepped into a Philadelphia voting booth on the evening of Election Day to ensure my 89-year-old mother wasn't intimidated by the electronic technology that would record her vote. She hadn't cast a presidential ballot in person since Kennedy - John, not Ted. At the Ward 65, Division 4 polling place, mom wore her Kamala shirt. I wore enough anxious hope on my face to see through a catcher's mask. The vote itself took all of 15 minutes on a warm autumn night that held so much promise, before it didn't. Then it all unraveled. I was spending the night with my mother to celebrate the person I expected - albeit nervously since July - to be the first female president in my lifetime. But especially in mom's lifetime; she will be 90 in May. I have never seen her as engaged with politics as she was this year. She has a Harris-Walz postcard on her refrigerator. A photo of the v...
Read more