THE HARD WAY

     The morning after the election, I went through a range of emotions.  As you can imagine it went something like this; shock, disbelief, fear, anger, and then on to varying degrees of depression.  On the way to work, I even quietly wondered to myself "What's the point of even going?"  For a brief moment I seriously considered turning the truck around, going home, and spending the day playing board games with my kids.  Then I thought, "No, that would make me one of them."  I'm a worker.  I work.  That's what I do.  I'm not ruled by emotions, jumping at every chance to use my feelings as an excuse to get out of doing something less than entertaining.
     With that, I went on to a day of sucking it up, and moving on with my life.  Of coarse, this did not cure my near-crippling depression and nagging sense of impending doom, but I still managed to keep all 18 wheels between the lines without aiming them at the first Prius with an Obama sticker that came into my view.

     For the next three days, I instituted a total media blackout at casa de Roadhouse.  With the exception of non-news oriented shows and channels, I shunned both my TV, and radio.  During my self-imposed exile, it occurred to me that what's happening in our country can be compared to a similar dynamic happening in my own home.
     I have two children, each representing one half of the population.  Despite being part of the same family, and living under the same roof, both have vastly different ways of approaching life...much like our current electorate living in America.
     With one child, I can tell her to not put her toy on the toilet tank because it will probably fall into the bowl.  In most cases, she will examine the likelihood of that, compare it to my warning and put the toy in her room.
     With the other, he will determine that he knows better, ignore my warning, put more toys on the tank, and soon, you can guess who will be fishing for a die-cast John Deere tractor and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure...PRE-flush.  If you guessed "Roadhouse", you win the prize.
     True, it's not my tractor or action figure, and it's not my feelings of regret, shame, and humiliation after the fact, but it is my hand that gets to go elbow-deep into a pool of unmentionable biology in order to fix the problem. 
     The flaw in my analogy is that my son can fall back on his young age and eagerness to be independent as a reasonable excuse for his short-sightedness.  But for Americans of voting age in this country...not so much.  So, though I am not looking "Forward" to it, I realize that there is little I can actually do about the fact that for at least the next four years, we are all going to be fishing for toys in a of bowl of poo.