My friend Poco the cat is the same age that I am, according to the complex ways of comparing creatures. We share a great many attributes as a result. Some instances would be:
- Entering a room and then realizing you can’t recall what you’d come in there for in the first place.
- The act of running is problematic, and if either of us had to catch our own dinners to survive, we wouldn’t last a day.
- Jumping vertically is something our minds bring up and our bodies immediately vote down … with extreme prejudice.
- Our fur tends towards the scraggly.
- We are much more demanding of comfort in places we choose to curl up. Quietness, warmth, and the sun on our backs are prized.
- There are times when you just want to stand in the middle of the room and miaow at the top of your lungs. Poco does so with gusto. I whimper.
I will temper this slightly negative discourse with photos of the two of us when we were younger and none of the above applied. Again … when we were about the same age .
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Last evening we had just finished supper when I had the brilliant idea to go to the Dairy Queen for Dilly Bars. And somehow I was able to phrase it so well that Robin actually ended up paying for the dessert. These ice cream bars are an instant connection to childhood. So simple … a chunk of ice cream on a stick covered with chocolate.
But even those were a connection to yet another similar bar which I enjoyed as a kid. I had made a career out of returning pop bottles to get a bit of pocket change, and if it was summertime a Cheerio bar only cost a nickel and was an awesome way to spend five cents.
As you bit into it the chocolate coating fractured like a window hit with a rock, and as you continued to chow down those brown splinters fell onto your clothing, your hands, the table in front of you … where they instantly melted.
One such bar could produce a dozen tiny messes but, hey, I was young enough not to care about a stain on my tee shirt or some chocolate smeared at the corner of my mouth. The sublime nature of the treat was worth any indignities suffered.
Just like last night, when I bit into my Dilly Bar and then spent the next ten minutes dealing with melting chocolate bits.
But it was all okay, because grownups know about napkins.
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One of the big problems for Adolf Hitler was that early on he had some successes, which led a whole lot of MDGA (Make Deutschland Great Again) Germans to pat him continuously on the back and tell him what a genius he was. Which eventually led to him not being willing to take advice from … anyone. Because everyone else’s ideas were inferior and not to be trusted.
The blunders that ensued, from the invasion of Russia and continuing forward ended up with him cowering in an underground bunker in a ruined Berlin, all the while blaming the German population for not being worthy of his perfectitude. This was closely followed by suicide for himself and some of his close associates.
His co-fascist Benito Mussolini had similar difficulties with dealing with praise. But he wasn’t quite as impractical as Adolf was, so when he saw the end coming for his dreams of Italian empire he decided to make a break for it. He was headed for Switzerland with his girlfriend when he was recognized by some partisans and that was it for Benito. He and his paramour were shot and their corpses hung on display from a scaffolding in front of a Milan gas station.
My point? If you gain power through sowing hatreds, it is possible that it will one day bite you severely in the ass.
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While I’m on the subject of fascism, there is an editorial worth reading in Thursday’s New York Times. The title is We Should All Be Very Very Afraid. The first paragraph in the piece tells us what the fuss is.
“Of all the lawless acts by the Trump administration in its first two and a half months, none are more frightening than its dumping of human beings who have not had their day in court into an infamous maximum-security prison in El Salvador — and then contending that no federal court has the authority to right these brazen wrongs.“
Want a free plane ride to a tropical country? Fly Trump Air to El Salvador. And while you’re there you can stay (again, for free) at CECOT, an all-inclusive resort, for a totally unforgettable experience. You’ll like it so much you’ll probably never want to come back. Even if they would let you.
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Little Home In The Valley 