Refusing to Turn

Greetings from Poosey.

It was a big grocery day for me. Four small bags. I realize that for some harried mothers only four sacks of groceries would hardly be worth a trip to the store, but Herb and I are light buyers, foolishly spending more fuel to get to the store than on the groceries themselves. Blame it on dementia. By the time I get there I’ve forgotten why I came and I’ve lost my list. But last week I thought I’d cut out an extra trip to town and stopped to shop at a new grocery store. There weren’t many cars in the parking lot so I pulled in to grab a few things and try out the store’s deli. When I went to check out I saw I had yes sir, yes sir, four bags full. The fellow sacking my goods seemed uninterested at best, but we can all have bad days. It wasn’t until I got home that I found he’d sacked the hot chicken and noodles with the chocolate chip cookies, the top had blasted off the soup and I was treated to the sight of broth-soaked chocolate chips. I tried to pass it off to Herb as a new type of sweet casserole but even my husband’s fractured taste buds smelled a rat …or rather a noodle.

The airlines would have counted this a success. Last week they announced with great fanfare that in the month of January their on-time departure rate was an astounding 76 percent …exactly the percentage of grocery bags that my nonplussed sacker got correct. I was tempted to run back to the grocery store to give the kid a bonus for coming up to the standard of the airlines.

It got me to wondering how many other businesses could call three-quarters success a victory. If my car only made it to town in three out of four trips would I eagerly line up to buy another just like it? If I had four brain surgeries and I lived through three of them would I count that a victory?

Of course, the airlines could be judging themselves by a different standard, that of the U.S. Congress. Can anyone point to a time in recent memory when our Congress was 76% effective in anything? Republicans hate the President and the Democrats hate the Republicans so both parties begin throwing out proposed legislation that won’t even pass the laugh test. This enables them to prove their liberalism or their conservatism back in their gerrymandered districts and provides delicious sound bites to be played in the TV ads for their next election. The scary part is that they think we’re too stupid to realize what they’re doing. The really, really scary part is that they might be right.

The Republicans have introduced 33 bills to repeal Obamacare. Whether you agree with the President’s health care system or not, can we all be so stupid to think that he won’t veto any measure that destroys what he considers the Hallmark of his administration? Used to be when the American public didn’t like something they elected a President who thought the same way. We called that outdated system “democracy.”

And unlike the cost of my chocolate chips and noodles, when Congress is inefficient it costs big bucks. They spend $3 million a year for buffet lunches, doughnuts and pizza alone. $21 million is the cost of running Congress for a single day, bringing the grand total to $5 billion a year. That buys a lot of chicken and noodles. Oh, yeah… our public servants charge us $400,000 a year for bottled water.

My grandfather used to tell about his neighbor who had a jackass that refused to turn left. He’d trained the beast to pull a cart, stand to be groomed, and the jack would even take a saddle, but Old Stormy refused to turn left. If you wanted to make a left turn you’d have circle around completely to the right. Grandpa allowed as how some jackasses had their quirks and it was no fault of his neighbor that his animal was uni-directional. However, the fellow would not give up. Nearly once a week the man would spend hours trying to get Old Stormy to make a left turn, wasting time and on some rough days putting a great deal of wear and tear on the old man’s system. The neighbor was hitting a regular zero percentage but kept on beating his head against a wall with a stubbornness that was matched on by his jackass. We told Grandpa that with that sort of uselessness we should have sent his neighbor to Congress. Grandpa replied, “Naw. We just sent the jackass.”

You ever ‘round Poosey, stop by. We may not answer the door but you’ll enjoy the trip.