The little red-haired girl, about three years old, was having a high old time waiting for her plane to come in. Left, for the moment, by her parents – in the care, apparently, of Grandma and Grandpa – she was running in little circles around the waiting area of Gate 22 in the Austin terminal, entertaining herself and the growing crowd of other passengers-to-be.
She danced. She bowed. She giggled. She crawled for a while on all fours up and down a short stretch of the concourse, and over the much-traveled carpet of the waiting area. She smiled shyly, ran to give hugs, glanced around at her appreciative audience, and clapped happily when her grandmother offered a cookie.
Cookie in hand, she backed to the center of the open space between seats. “Mine,” her shining eyes said.
She took one dainty, lady-like bite, chewed happily – then watched in surprise as the unbitten half of the cookie slipped from her fingers and plunged to the floor.
She instantly stooped to scoop up the lost morsel. Her grandmother spoke quickly, telling her not to put it in her mouth. Watching, I wondered that it was all right for the child to eat even the undropped part of the cookie, given where her hands had been, these last 10 minutes or so.
Just at that moment, Mom and Dad appeared, both echoing the grandmother’s warning. “Don’t eat that!” they said, firmly. Each of them was carrying, amid their jackets and carry-ons, a sizeable cup of frozen yogurt, piled high with bits of fruit and nuts and candy. They balanced their treats as Grandma and Grandpa scooted over a seat or two to make room for them.
The little redhead smiled at the sight of her parents … then grew solemn, remembering the forbidden sweet beckoning from her fingertips. Surrendering power was clearly a sacrifice. But, dutifully, she came forward to hand over the uneatable half of her cookie.
“Do you want some yogurt?” her dad asked, by way of consolation. Without further ado, the little girl plunged her hand into the top of his dessert, feeling around for a few of the toppings and then jamming them, along with her whole dirty hand, deep into her mouth. She carefully licked her creamy fingers – then jammed them into the top of her mother’s yogurt cup. Both parents smiled and encouraged her to try the different candies in the cream.
“So,” (I thought, watching), “it’s not okay to eat a cookie off the floor, but it is okay to stick whatever was on the floor itself into her mouth – and her parents’ froyo?” The intricacies of good parenting sometimes elude me.
But then, so do many aspects of American politics, as we wade through the last deluge of candidate ads, texts, commercials, and interviews, prior to the midterms, a-comin’. ‘ve been following the general flow of political conversation, in spite of myself, and as best I understand them, the current rules of proper government run along lines almost as sensible as the hygiene enforced by the parents of the little red-headed girl. A brief, handy guide, should you need one:
1. Killing babies is okay – in or out of the womb – and the more brutally and cruelly, the better. Just don’t do or say anything racist people might call “racist.”
2. Bombing pro-life centers, defacing churches, even looting and leveling whole communities is perfectly fine. Just don’t run through the U.S. Capitol.
3. You can and should encourage children of all ages to deny their birth gender and butcher their bodies in irreparable ways. But please don’t make them pay for college.
4. Criminalizing parents, censoring the Christians, and silencing the sincere questions of honest people – all no problem. Just don’t hold those in actual authority accountable for anything.
5. Throw open the borders, let crime run rampant and unpunished, thoroughly compromise and corrupt the electoral process. But remember: don’t “threaten democracy.”
We all have full lives, and so much of the time, it's easy just to let the politicos run around, doing what they do. Having their own way, mostly. Bowing, beaming, performing for the crowd.
But, if you look closely – beyond the smiling, solemn faces shining off your TV screen and the street corner posters and placards – you’ll find some pretty filthy hands feeling around in your yogurt cup.
Be careful what you swallow.
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