Copyrights reserved by the author. If you are in doubt, please click on 'Copyrights' and read the details.Even a curmudgeon can't always have the last word by J. G. Fabiano A curmudgeon? In the heat of a political discussion concerning how our society has become obsessed with power and wealth my brother-in-law stopped my argument with a single word. He surprised me with a simple phrase that made all the onlookers to our squabble stare and agree that my newest of titles was the one that fit me best. Sensing success he didn't stop there; he added the adjectives pessimistic and simplistic to the noun curmudgeon. I then wondered if I was destined to be known forever after as a pessimistic and simplistic curmudgeon. All the way home I kept asking my wife how a man whose earliest memory of politics had to do with donning a white shirt and thin black tie so I could emulate my belief in Jack Kennedy's New Frontier be called a curmudgeon? How could I be called such a name? How could a man, whose history evolved with the concept of the Great Society, be reduced to such a, well, simplistic description? Silence. I waited for my wife of 30 years to agree with me only to have her sit there and stare resolutely out the windshield of my car. I then asked if she was awake, at which time she turned to me and said my brother-in-law was not the only member of our family who considered me to be a curmudgeon. I was aghast! Me, whose face should be in Webster's Dictionary next to the word non-curmudgeon if such a word, existed? How could such a label be placed on someone who considered himself a natural defender of the dispossessed and downtrodden? I resumed our conversation by telling my wife how happy I was about our present economic and political condition as a nation. I explained that I was thrilled that, as a nation, we were in more debt then we had ever been. I was ecstatic that we turned an historic surplus into an historic deficit in just three years. I told my wife to behold my happiness that this was just the beginning of the debt we would generously give over to our children to pay. With the new Medicare laws, the ever-increasing expenses of the war, and who knew how many more tax breaks we would be giving to the richest of our citizens, why should I be called a curmudgeon since I had so much to be grateful for? Earlier in the day my brother-in-law had reminded me that our economy was "red hot," and not only that it was heating up more than we ever thought possible. That was great, I told him. Then I went on to remind him that in years gone by, when we actually followed basic economic rules, when the economy heated up as much as it had now there was a little thing called inflation that was always sure to rear its head. What would be better, I asked him, than a debt that lost control of its own zeros to an inflation rate that might just attempt to keep up with it. How could one possibly be a curmudgeon in such invigorating circumstances? Talking about a war that was supposed to have ended months ago I was about as happy as a pig in poop. Why get upset about sending our nation's husbands, wives and sons and daughters overseas to fight a war to protect our homeland from weapons of mass destruction only to find out that the real reason we sent our forces over there was to free an enslaved people who were now in the process of trying to blow us up? One should be thrilled about a situation that not only has no end in sight but also promises to add to what has become the largest deficit in our nation's history. In the midst of my ranting my wife looked over and stated that all I needed was a missing front tooth and I would look like "MAD" magazine's Alfred E. Newman. During the entire conversation I had attempted to put the widest smile on my face to prove to her that I was not a curmudgeon but rather a smiling used car salesman trying to get a 75-year-old woman into a Maserati. I then started on the environment. I told her I was thrilled that we had finally got all those environmentalists off our backs with their save this tree, or protect that ocean, or clean out this patch of sky. I told my wife it was obvious that as long as the air looked clean and as long as the water smelled clean we had nothing to worry about. Driving over the Piscataqua Bridge I pointed to the stacks that were emitting white blooms of smoke. See, I told her triumphantly, it was obvious that the stacks were high enough to have all the bad stuff go into the upper air and never fall to earth. Plus the smoke was white and everyone knew that as long as the smoke was white it couldn't possibly hurt anything. I think by this time in our conversation my wife was getting a bit concerned over the large pulsating vein that had appeared in the middle of my forehead. I then switched the conversation to energy while my wife continued to stare out of the windshield in the hope that I would soon run out of breath. I told her I was thrilled that we had so many sources of energy in this country just waiting to be tapped. All that frozen tundra up in Alaska just waiting to be drilled. I told her I was sure that the animals who lived on this American tundra would be thrilled to see us because the heat given off by the drilling machinery could keep them warm. Whole herds of animals could nestle close to the oil pumps and generators not having to worry about freezing to death in lands that we should have saved years before. Not that we had to go to Alaska to count our blessings, I said. We had so much to be glad of, right here in York, with the atmosphere surrounding our local politics. I thought I heard my wife moan quietly but I had too much momentum up to be stopped now. I told her that I thought it was great that the people responsible for running our town were more interested in deciding who should sit where than in trying to solve any problems we might have with our property taxes, schools, healthcare costs, our old and frail or young and poor. Everything in our little universe was just peachy, I said, pausing only because there was something about the way I said the word `peachy' that left a distinct spray pattern on the inside of the windshield."Enough!" my wife yelled, seizing her moment. "Enough of the happy curmudgeon. From now on I want you to be the grizzled, old, white-haired balding middle-aged son-of-a-bastard that I fell in love with."My wife had stopped my comprehensive dissertation on the meaning of life, politics, the universe and everything with a single word. "What do you mean, balding?" I said. The End
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