OOOPS, Sorry I Shot You in the FACE

Vice President Dick Cheney shot a dude in the motherfucking face. Not the quails flying overhead, not even a goddamn extremity. Who the hell does that? What type of message does it send the country trying to hunt down terrorists when the second in command shoots a guy in the mug? It can either say: “we’re willing to shoot anyone, and don’t get in my way, you stupid asshole” or “I can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys even when they’re wearing bright orange hunting regalia.” Neither sounds great to me.
How does one shoot a person by accident, in the face no less? Well, first you have to start with a dash of conservative politics. I don’t know the exact figures, but I’ve met more conservative hunters than liberal ones. Then, mix in guns. Those conservatives loooooove their guns. Pretty much any guns too. They think any Tom, DICK, or Sally should be allowed anything below a rocket launcher. Evidently it helps to shoot someone in the face when you’ve had a few beers too. If the reason Cheney didn’t come out and say he popped a guy in the face for a whole day was because he was drinking, doesn’t that make you think he was blacked-out-loaded when the administration planned the invasion of Iraq?
The whole incident makes me think our VP is actually Elmer Fudd; hunting people not waskaly wabbbits. I would think in normal circumstances wouldn’t the perpetrator of shooting a guy in the face (accidentally or not) probably face (sorry for the awful pun) some sort of legal ramifications? Supposedly this guy he shot is, or should I was was, a friend? If he was a close friend, how do you apologize for something like that? The apology in college would be something like, “ohhhhh shit dude, fuck man, I’m soo sorry….want to grab another beer sometime? It’s totally my bad man.” The apology in the Adult World would be, “I’m terribly sorry for this tragic accident that should have been prevented by looking where I was pointing my gun when I fired it. I’ll pay for your medical bills.”
I wish I were a high-ranking politician, if only because I could play paintball with live ammunition. Do you think they killed any quail that day? Was it like touch football that gets out of hand and you say to your buddy, “awww c’mon it can’t hurt that much. Walk it off man.” It’s doubtful Cheney’s hunting pal was able to do much of anything after his run-in with the VP’s buckshot.

I Hate People

I hate people, but I love individuals. This mantra of mine has been in development since I was an early teenager. The philosophy stems from a wide variety of personal experiences and interactions with the public. As I turn 22 this week I feel like my experiences are only going to grow with people and their consistent terrible performance.
People are mean. People are inconsiderate. People are selfish. People are assholes. People are polluting our beautiful world. People commit rape, murder, arson, and rape. People are insensitive. People are numb. Why? Indifference. It doesn’t affect you, why should you care?
Individuals are generous, caring, loving, respectful, kind, helpful, thoughtful, and wonderful. These certain people are kept as close as possible and make the terrible world we live in all the more tolerable. In certain cases they even turn our little microcosms into the most splendid places anywhere.
How do I know this universal truth? I have seen it in action. Through working retail. Through people watching. Through living. People suck, but the little things are what keep me coming back for more. Somewhere along the way, out of nowhere an unexpected individual makes my mental burden light as a feather. These are the types of individuals that go unnoticed by people. People just want, want, want. What they need is a swift kick in the ass. Except, the individuals who are above that, and this fact is what makes them an individual and not one of the flock.
In the F&M community that we hold so dear I would consider there to be very few individuals. You can never know all of them and most likely they will go unnoticed. When I left high school I was desperate to leave the society of cliques. I had heard of this great place called College where people are free to choose who they spend their time with. Walk in different circles, start new, grow, develop, change and mature. Unfortunately, I have come to conclude that most need more than four years to go through this process, and some will need a lifetime.
What makes me superior? Nothing. But I do know that it is a personal goal to be one of these individuals that gives more than he takes. I’m not the Dali Llama with the flowing robes, the grace…. The miracles I hope to perform in my lifetime are ones that are on an individual basis. People are content just to be self-serving and make themselves happy. This is okay to an extent. Isn’t it more rewarding to make others happy and think of someone else for a change? Think for a moment, if people in the world worried about making others happy. They wouldn’t have to worry about making themselves happy because they’d have so many others already looking out for them.
I realize this holier-than-thou attitude may come off as brash, mean, or immature but it doesn’t come without firsthand experience. How many times has a door been shut in your face that could just as easily been held. How many times has someone said, “just do whatever, I’m on the cell.” How many times do you buy some underage punk beer so that you can get on their good side and meet his or her roommate? How many times a day do you think about how your actions make someone else feel?
Often people make decisions that end up hurting an individual. These individuals pour their being into making other people happy. Individuals are the ones that end up getting hurt, not the other thoughtless people. This sucks. If people took the time to step back, analyze their actions and think about an individual this scenario wouldn’t happen. But because people are so self-consumed conflict and contention are the end result.
Maybe you think I’m an asshole, maybe you think I’m the greatest thing since low-carb beer, sliced bread, the wheel, and obsessively flavored soda combined. Either way, I’m gonna keep trying to make you happy until I’m either too tired or too cynical to keep trying. If you want to give then give, but do it for them, not for you. Be an individual. Don’t fall into the crowd of people. And finally, that golden rule we learned in kindergarten just seems to ring so very true: Do unto others, as you would hope they’d do unto you.

OOOPS, Sorry I Shot You in the FACE

Vice President Dick Cheney shot a dude in the motherfucking face. Not the quails flying overhead, not even a goddamn extremity. Who the hell does that? What type of message does it send the country trying to hunt down terrorists when the second in command shoots a guy in the mug? It can either say: “we’re willing to shoot anyone, and don’t get in my way, you stupid asshole” or “I can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys even when they’re wearing bright orange hunting regalia.” Neither sounds great to me.
How does one shoot a person by accident, in the face no less? Well, first you have to start with a dash of conservative politics. I don’t know the exact figures, but I’ve met more conservative hunters than liberal ones. Then, mix in guns. Those conservatives loooooove their guns. Pretty much any guns too. They think any Tom, DICK, or Sally should be allowed anything below a rocket launcher. Evidently it helps to shoot someone in the face when you’ve had a few beers too. If the reason Cheney didn’t come out and say he popped a guy in the face for a whole day was because he was drinking, doesn’t that make you think he was blacked-out-loaded when the administration planned the invasion of Iraq?
The whole incident makes me think our VP is actually Elmer Fudd; hunting people not waskaly wabbbits. I would think in normal circumstances wouldn’t the perpetrator of shooting a guy in the face (accidentally or not) probably face (sorry for the awful pun) some sort of legal ramifications? Supposedly this guy he shot is, or should I was was, a friend? If he was a close friend, how do you apologize for something like that? The apology in college would be something like, “ohhhhh shit dude, fuck man, I’m soo sorry….want to grab another beer sometime? It’s totally my bad man.” The apology in the Adult World would be, “I’m terribly sorry for this tragic accident that should have been prevented by looking where I was pointing my gun when I fired it. I’ll pay for your medical bills.”
I wish I were a high-ranking politician, if only because I could play paintball with live ammunition. Do you think they killed any quail that day? Was it like touch football that gets out of hand and you say to your buddy, “awww c’mon it can’t hurt that much. Walk it off man.” It’s doubtful Cheney’s hunting pal was able to do much of anything after his run-in with the VP’s buckshot.

I Hate People

I hate people, but I love individuals. This mantra of mine has been in development since I was an early teenager. The philosophy stems from a wide variety of personal experiences and interactions with the public. As I turn 22 this week I feel like my experiences are only going to grow with people and their consistent terrible performance.
People are mean. People are inconsiderate. People are selfish. People are assholes. People are polluting our beautiful world. People commit rape, murder, arson, and rape. People are insensitive. People are numb. Why? Indifference. It doesn’t affect you, why should you care?
Individuals are generous, caring, loving, respectful, kind, helpful, thoughtful, and wonderful. These certain people are kept as close as possible and make the terrible world we live in all the more tolerable. In certain cases they even turn our little microcosms into the most splendid places anywhere.
How do I know this universal truth? I have seen it in action. Through working retail. Through people watching. Through living. People suck, but the little things are what keep me coming back for more. Somewhere along the way, out of nowhere an unexpected individual makes my mental burden light as a feather. These are the types of individuals that go unnoticed by people. People just want, want, want. What they need is a swift kick in the ass. Except, the individuals who are above that, and this fact is what makes them an individual and not one of the flock.
In the F&M community that we hold so dear I would consider there to be very few individuals. You can never know all of them and most likely they will go unnoticed. When I left high school I was desperate to leave the society of cliques. I had heard of this great place called College where people are free to choose who they spend their time with. Walk in different circles, start new, grow, develop, change and mature. Unfortunately, I have come to conclude that most need more than four years to go through this process, and some will need a lifetime.
What makes me superior? Nothing. But I do know that it is a personal goal to be one of these individuals that gives more than he takes. I’m not the Dali Llama with the flowing robes, the grace…. The miracles I hope to perform in my lifetime are ones that are on an individual basis. People are content just to be self-serving and make themselves happy. This is okay to an extent. Isn’t it more rewarding to make others happy and think of someone else for a change? Think for a moment, if people in the world worried about making others happy. They wouldn’t have to worry about making themselves happy because they’d have so many others already looking out for them.
I realize this holier-than-thou attitude may come off as brash, mean, or immature but it doesn’t come without firsthand experience. How many times has a door been shut in your face that could just as easily been held. How many times has someone said, “just do whatever, I’m on the cell.” How many times do you buy some underage punk beer so that you can get on their good side and meet his or her roommate? How many times a day do you think about how your actions make someone else feel?
Often people make decisions that end up hurting an individual. These individuals pour their being into making other people happy. Individuals are the ones that end up getting hurt, not the other thoughtless people. This sucks. If people took the time to step back, analyze their actions and think about an individual this scenario wouldn’t happen. But because people are so self-consumed conflict and contention are the end result.
Maybe you think I’m an asshole, maybe you think I’m the greatest thing since low-carb beer, sliced bread, the wheel, and obsessively flavored soda combined. Either way, I’m gonna keep trying to make you happy until I’m either too tired or too cynical to keep trying. If you want to give then give, but do it for them, not for you. Be an individual. Don’t fall into the crowd of people. And finally, that golden rule we learned in kindergarten just seems to ring so very true: Do unto others, as you would hope they’d do unto you.

The Worst/Best Job Ever

For one sparkling, muggy, Northern Virginia summer I had a cushy summer job. The summer did not start out this way. I began by working at my local Target where my starting pay was 50 cents less than my younger sister (with no job experience) at CVS. Managers, that had the mental capacities of chimpanzees, told me to “straighten up my lane” or other such bullshit things that made it appear like I was doing work. One day when the store opened I brought along a book to read during down time. There was a ton of down time in Target at 9am on a Tuesday. But, alas I was scolded for reading when there was no one in the store and that I “should get back to work.” This was pretty much the last straw.
The following week, still working at Target, I had gotten another job working for the homeowners’ association in my town. This association picks up trash from dumpsters at public pool, does minor construction on pathways, cleans tennis courts, and cuts grass along medians and streets. Before starting at this new job full time I needed to muster up the courage to quit Target. This courage came in the form of a phone call from my best friend Dan. Dan called asking me to go with him to see the third installment of the American Pie trilogy. Now, I loved American Pie as much as the next sexually awkward teenager, but quitting my job to go see the third seemed to be asking a bit much.
On the other hand, Dan is very persuasive. All he had to do to convince me of going was to offer me a free ticket and some candy. Yes, I will quit any job for a movie so long as you pay for me and buy me Sour Patch Kids at the theatre.
My job at Reston Association (RA) started out consisting of me being at work by 7:30am (which I despised) and taking “orders” from a crack-pot middle-aged gentleman that didn’t like hearing he was wrong and doing minor/light construction around town. Most of what we did on a day-to-day basis was “backfilling.” This basically meant shoveling dirt from a dump truck next to a pre-existing path so that grass could grow closer to the path and there would be less chances of sprained ankles from possibly falling of the paths. This job sucked. I became very well adept at shoveling, mixing cement, driving large trucks with larger blind spots, and digging holes for posts. Work could only get easier. Thankfully it did when one of my best friends (working in a different “department”) had a run-in with a large yellow cement post at the drive-thru of Taco Bell. He left a large dent in the driver’s side rear quarter panel and was not allowed to drive the rest of the summer. He and I switched jobs, which he had been raving about the whole summer.
This new job was the zenith of any summer job I will or ever had. I was responsible for cleaning and sweeping our two sets of pseudo-clay tennis courts in town. I got to ride these cool tractors with brooms attached to their backs and blow leaves. The catch came in the fact that my new boss was very trusting and good-natured. I would get to work around the same time, tell him what I planned to do and went on my merry way. I cleaned both sets of courts, that took about 90 minutes, and I then proceeded to go back to my house. At my house I lied down on my couch and watched some early morning news and eventually fell asleep from around 9:30 till about lunchtime. My mom would come home from her part-time job and ask if I was supposed to be working, and I explained that I was “working.” I’d eat lunch with my mom, and then hop back into the company truck and drive around for the remainder of the day listening to the radio. All this while getting paid a hefty $9/hr. for doing not a whole lot.

Super Bowl XL

This past Sunday Super Bowl XL took place in Detroit between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks. Overall, the game sucked. There was one great play by the Steelers that led to the final score of 21-10 and the Steelers’ victory. I should have been able to predict this outcome more readily. My high school mascot was the Seahawk too, and we never won any important game. Our guys’ basketball team made it to the Virginia State Finals two of my four years in school, and lost both times in overtime. The mascot of a Seahawk was doomed from the beginning.
In my apartment there was a loud Super Bowl party happening without me. My roommate invited over numerous people to partake in mountains of pizza, buffalo wings, chips, dip, and brownies. Again, I should not have been surprised by the overwhelming amount of food. My roommate has no clue about how much food is sufficient for a human being to eat in one sitting, or one week for that matter. This is the same roommate that had never been grocery shopping for actual sustaining food prior to his senior year in college. So, I guess it was only natural that one would think that eight people could consume eight pizzas. The company was not the offensive line of a football team. On the contrary, the company was made up of a few skinny guys and some girls that would have rather had granola than pizza.
It is a shame that I could not fully enjoy the game in the same gluttonous manner. Unfortunately, I had to complete massive amounts of schoolwork. I was left to sit in front of a non-HDTV with my laptop blocking half of the screen writing an essay. I kept thinking I might miss something great in the game or a hysterical commercial, but alas the entire experience was lackluster. The commercials were not that funny, nor worth millions of dollars. The game was sloppy with turnover after turnover. And the Rolling Stones looked like they would disintegrate if push came to shove.
The halftime show featuring the Rolling Stones was such a joke. It was like watching the Rolling Stones do really bad karaoke of their own songs. I am usually a proponent of musicians changing their songs during a live show to demonstrate they actually have talent, but in the case of the Rolling Stones they sounded old (because they are), tired (because they probably were), and incredibly flat. In any case, I would have much preferred to see a terrible American Idol winner lip-sync a shitty pop song than one of the greatest rock ‘n roll bands butcher their own.
I was not even sad this year that I missed the seemingly endless pre-game analysis. Over the past few years these pre-game shows have become more and more absurd. They feel the need to beat a subject to a pulp, grind the pulp in a blender, pour it into a destroyed paper cup and then talk about how they have beaten said subject into such a mutilated pulp. This stuff gets old pretty quick. The NFL made this gerrymandering process even worse a few years ago when they decided that there should be two weeks before the Super Bowl instead of the usual single week. The playoffs are going along at a nice steady pace and then right before the climax they say, “nope, sorry, one more week” and drag it out.

Out of Class

At home in my family’s not-so vast VHS collection rests proof that I sang before President Bush. The first “shrub,” not the current weed. This came about when I was in first grade minding my own arithmetic exercises. The headmaster of my private Jewish Day School requested my presence in the hallway. Everyone in the class “oooohed” and “aaaaahed” as they thought I was in some “deep trouble.” I rose from my desk and entered the hallway with trepidation. Once in the hallway, Rabbi Taff and I walked to his office. If I remember correctly there were a couple other kids waiting there already. Most of these other kids were older and not at all familiar except for a couple boys that were better than me at dodge ball. By the 6th grade I was generally considered the best dodgeballer in the school. I also was the clean-up kicker for any kickball game. My prepubescent athletic career aside, Rabbi Taff would go on to explain that our small Northern Virginia school had been asked to sing in the building adjacent to the White House for Chanukah. I had been chosen for this makeshift choir that turned out to be quite an honor.
This opportunity did not really have an impact on me in first grade. I thought it was cooler that I was selected and not any other kids from my class, than the whole concept of being a few feet from the President. Performing for the President was much lower on my list. I do not recall if my parents were there to see it happen. My mom probably was, but since my dad was still in the Navy, and working at the Pentagon, he was probably not around.
Our little choir was driven into Washington, D.C. by parents and were escorted to where we would perform. The whole performance did not last much longer than 5-10 minutes. We sang typical Chanukah songs that have since been made fun of by the likes of SNL and others. When the songs were over the President came over to us and congratulated the group. He seemed genuinely impressed.
The VHS tape sits in a plain black box adorned with a label printed on a dot-matrix. These details alone tell the age of this childhood experience. I once took the tape out to re-live my first grade glory only to find that it was just weird to see myself at a single digit age without a care in the world. It’s funny to think that at my tender age there was greater glory in being a kick-ass dodgeball player than being called out of class to sing for, and meet the President. Looking back, it was one of the cooler things that I got to experience during my formative years. I do not think I could have possibly grasped the uniqueness at such a young age. Today, I would not like to meet our current President for fear of bringing a red rubber ball and pegging it at “W” and yelling, “You’re OUT!”

The Worst/Best Job Ever

For one sparkling, muggy, Northern Virginia summer I had a cushy summer job. The summer did not start out this way. I began by working at my local Target where my starting pay was 50 cents less than my younger sister (with no job experience) at CVS. Managers, that had the mental capacities of chimpanzees, told me to “straighten up my lane” or other such bullshit things that made it appear like I was doing work. One day when the store opened I brought along a book to read during down time. There was a ton of down time in Target at 9am on a Tuesday. But, alas I was scolded for reading when there was no one in the store and that I “should get back to work.” This was pretty much the last straw.
The following week, still working at Target, I had gotten another job working for the homeowners’ association in my town. This association picks up trash from dumpsters at public pool, does minor construction on pathways, cleans tennis courts, and cuts grass along medians and streets. Before starting at this new job full time I needed to muster up the courage to quit Target. This courage came in the form of a phone call from my best friend Dan. Dan called asking me to go with him to see the third installment of the American Pie trilogy. Now, I loved American Pie as much as the next sexually awkward teenager, but quitting my job to go see the third seemed to be asking a bit much.
On the other hand, Dan is very persuasive. All he had to do to convince me of going was to offer me a free ticket and some candy. Yes, I will quit any job for a movie so long as you pay for me and buy me Sour Patch Kids at the theatre.
My job at Reston Association (RA) started out consisting of me being at work by 7:30am (which I despised) and taking “orders” from a crack-pot middle-aged gentleman that didn’t like hearing he was wrong and doing minor/light construction around town. Most of what we did on a day-to-day basis was “backfilling.” This basically meant shoveling dirt from a dump truck next to a pre-existing path so that grass could grow closer to the path and there would be less chances of sprained ankles from possibly falling of the paths. This job sucked. I became very well adept at shoveling, mixing cement, driving large trucks with larger blind spots, and digging holes for posts. Work could only get easier. Thankfully it did when one of my best friends (working in a different “department”) had a run-in with a large yellow cement post at the drive-thru of Taco Bell. He left a large dent in the driver’s side rear quarter panel and was not allowed to drive the rest of the summer. He and I switched jobs, which he had been raving about the whole summer.
This new job was the zenith of any summer job I will or ever had. I was responsible for cleaning and sweeping our two sets of pseudo-clay tennis courts in town. I got to ride these cool tractors with brooms attached to their backs and blow leaves. The catch came in the fact that my new boss was very trusting and good-natured. I would get to work around the same time, tell him what I planned to do and went on my merry way. I cleaned both sets of courts, that took about 90 minutes, and I then proceeded to go back to my house. At my house I lied down on my couch and watched some early morning news and eventually fell asleep from around 9:30 till about lunchtime. My mom would come home from her part-time job and ask if I was supposed to be working, and I explained that I was “working.” I’d eat lunch with my mom, and then hop back into the company truck and drive around for the remainder of the day listening to the radio. All this while getting paid a hefty $9/hr. for doing not a whole lot.

Super Bowl XL

This past Sunday Super Bowl XL took place in Detroit between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks. Overall, the game sucked. There was one great play by the Steelers that led to the final score of 21-10 and the Steelers’ victory. I should have been able to predict this outcome more readily. My high school mascot was the Seahawk too, and we never won any important game. Our guys’ basketball team made it to the Virginia State Finals two of my four years in school, and lost both times in overtime. The mascot of a Seahawk was doomed from the beginning.
In my apartment there was a loud Super Bowl party happening without me. My roommate invited over numerous people to partake in mountains of pizza, buffalo wings, chips, dip, and brownies. Again, I should not have been surprised by the overwhelming amount of food. My roommate has no clue about how much food is sufficient for a human being to eat in one sitting, or one week for that matter. This is the same roommate that had never been grocery shopping for actual sustaining food prior to his senior year in college. So, I guess it was only natural that one would think that eight people could consume eight pizzas. The company was not the offensive line of a football team. On the contrary, the company was made up of a few skinny guys and some girls that would have rather had granola than pizza.
It is a shame that I could not fully enjoy the game in the same gluttonous manner. Unfortunately, I had to complete massive amounts of schoolwork. I was left to sit in front of a non-HDTV with my laptop blocking half of the screen writing an essay. I kept thinking I might miss something great in the game or a hysterical commercial, but alas the entire experience was lackluster. The commercials were not that funny, nor worth millions of dollars. The game was sloppy with turnover after turnover. And the Rolling Stones looked like they would disintegrate if push came to shove.
The halftime show featuring the Rolling Stones was such a joke. It was like watching the Rolling Stones do really bad karaoke of their own songs. I am usually a proponent of musicians changing their songs during a live show to demonstrate they actually have talent, but in the case of the Rolling Stones they sounded old (because they are), tired (because they probably were), and incredibly flat. In any case, I would have much preferred to see a terrible American Idol winner lip-sync a shitty pop song than one of the greatest rock ‘n roll bands butcher their own.
I was not even sad this year that I missed the seemingly endless pre-game analysis. Over the past few years these pre-game shows have become more and more absurd. They feel the need to beat a subject to a pulp, grind the pulp in a blender, pour it into a destroyed paper cup and then talk about how they have beaten said subject into such a mutilated pulp. This stuff gets old pretty quick. The NFL made this gerrymandering process even worse a few years ago when they decided that there should be two weeks before the Super Bowl instead of the usual single week. The playoffs are going along at a nice steady pace and then right before the climax they say, “nope, sorry, one more week” and drag it out.

Out of Class

At home in my family’s not-so vast VHS collection rests proof that I sang before President Bush. The first “shrub,” not the current weed. This came about when I was in first grade minding my own arithmetic exercises. The headmaster of my private Jewish Day School requested my presence in the hallway. Everyone in the class “oooohed” and “aaaaahed” as they thought I was in some “deep trouble.” I rose from my desk and entered the hallway with trepidation. Once in the hallway, Rabbi Taff and I walked to his office. If I remember correctly there were a couple other kids waiting there already. Most of these other kids were older and not at all familiar except for a couple boys that were better than me at dodge ball. By the 6th grade I was generally considered the best dodgeballer in the school. I also was the clean-up kicker for any kickball game. My prepubescent athletic career aside, Rabbi Taff would go on to explain that our small Northern Virginia school had been asked to sing in the building adjacent to the White House for Chanukah. I had been chosen for this makeshift choir that turned out to be quite an honor.
This opportunity did not really have an impact on me in first grade. I thought it was cooler that I was selected and not any other kids from my class, than the whole concept of being a few feet from the President. Performing for the President was much lower on my list. I do not recall if my parents were there to see it happen. My mom probably was, but since my dad was still in the Navy, and working at the Pentagon, he was probably not around.
Our little choir was driven into Washington, D.C. by parents and were escorted to where we would perform. The whole performance did not last much longer than 5-10 minutes. We sang typical Chanukah songs that have since been made fun of by the likes of SNL and others. When the songs were over the President came over to us and congratulated the group. He seemed genuinely impressed.
The VHS tape sits in a plain black box adorned with a label printed on a dot-matrix. These details alone tell the age of this childhood experience. I once took the tape out to re-live my first grade glory only to find that it was just weird to see myself at a single digit age without a care in the world. It’s funny to think that at my tender age there was greater glory in being a kick-ass dodgeball player than being called out of class to sing for, and meet the President. Looking back, it was one of the cooler things that I got to experience during my formative years. I do not think I could have possibly grasped the uniqueness at such a young age. Today, I would not like to meet our current President for fear of bringing a red rubber ball and pegging it at “W” and yelling, “You’re OUT!”