300 Words: Thoughts of a pretired French Teacher

Patience is sometimes hard to come by. I see that inability to wait in the grandkids, my feelings exaggerated. We are all impatient. There is nothing more that I hate than waiting when I have decided something and then have to put up with watching the calendar and clock. The little ones are even more impatient. They hear you say to wait and then ten seconds later they are asking again. “Come on guys, let’s understand that we have to wait!” That is way easier said than done.

Right now, things are all prepared for the grandkids. I even got up and made a batch of crêpes. They so enjoyed them the other day that I decided since I was up that I would throw the eggs, milk, the tiny bit of oil and salt, together and quickly mix it up and allow it at least a little time to rest.

Patience is a commodity that is intolerable when the intolerable is occurring, like right now politically. It is not as if I want to wish my life away, but seeing the demolition of the few good laws that we had is hard to watch. Being patient there is, perhaps, not an option.

On a side note, does anyone else wonder about all those people we know who say nothing about what is going on? I know countless people who have been totally non-reactive. Does that mean that they are supportive of the awful things we are perpetrating on our fellow human beings? Are they sad but afraid to react? They seem to go about their daily lives and say nothing, as if nothing is wrong and yet political atrocities are happening at a frightful pace.

I think maybe I understand Nazi Germany all the more now.

Sometimes, one risks losing faith in humanity. Does humanity actually exist?

It is clear that the country is in distress.

It is clear that there are numerous people who are very much unhappy with the state of affairs, have been so for a long time, and whose opinions are not in sync with those of the majority. The majority has been toyed with by an electoral college that exists solely to keep a segment of our population under the thumb of those of us who are entitled and by tampering by forces from without. Without having the statistics under my thumb, I must say that this is what I believe.

Most of the people who live in my area are like me in my concern for a fascist tendency on our national government and by a total disregard for the true welfare of the people. We have not met the needs of the people who voted for the current régime. They are strangely disenfranchised.

The photo that I display is that of malbor’s sign, something he has placed next to his back door. I finally have proof of, perhaps, one of the reasons he hates me with such virulence. His political persuasion is the total opposite of ours. There has never been a discussion of politics. There has been discussion of politics on our part, in our back yard, something that would be possibly heard next door.

I saw signs of the political persuasion before; there was a confederate flag over a year ago which was met with concern on the part of his neighbor to the east. There has been a profusion of American flags, to the point that it is weirdly patriotic. There was also some sort of actual Trump sign, but it was not clear to me whether it was for or against.

No matter whom we choose to lead this country in the future, this disenfranchised group’s needs need to be addressed.