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1031blog

Purgatory Here I Come

I woke up this morning and a queer thing happened when I turned on the television and saw that the 7th FAI World Sailplane Grand Prix Championship was scheduled for that day in the South African town of Potchefstroom.

Like many others, I have always been a World Sailplane aficionado but I thought the championships weren’t held in the same city twice and I thought the competition was held in Potchefstroom four years ago. Oh well, no big deal, I guess I was wrong and I set my alarm to go off at kickoff time to remind me to watch the championships, as I had every year for many years.

I switched on the radio and heard one of my favorite singers, Keith Urban, singing his big hit, “Blue Ain’t Your Color,” which it was noted had won the Country Music Association Award for Single of the Year. Hmmm. Turning to the newspaper, I saw an ad for the movie, “Hacksaw Ridge,” Mel Gibson’s award-winning film about Pfc. Desmond T. Doss who won the Congressional Medal of Honor despite refusing to bear arms during World War II on religious grounds. I thought I had seen that before but that was impossible.

It was getting weirder and weirder.

I paged to the obituaries and saw that my favorite Ghanian football coach, Emmanuel Kwasi Afranie, was killed in a traffic accident. It seemed familiar, as if I had already known about his tragic death.

I have always been a big fan of the World Sailplane championships and Keith Urban is still one of my favorite singers but I thought he won the single of the year in 2016. I really enjoyed “Hacksaw Ridge,” even though I think Mel Gibson is a jerk, to be kind, but why was it getting re-released now?

Moving on, I read about an Oregon hunter Gary Heeter, 69, who had been impaled on the antlers of a bull elk he had harvested just a short time earlier on his ATV. I new Heeter because I also have been an avid elk hunter and had myself once nearly been impaled by antlers, but I thought this was old news.

I checked my voice mail and there was a message reminding me about not eating or drinking before going in for my colonoscopy. I was more than puzzled and filled with chagrin and dread because I thought I had wasn’t scheduled for another colonoscopy for at least three more years.

Having read the news of the morning, I donned my mask and proceeded to the Dunkin Donuts where I was shocked and upset to say the least upon seeing that nobody else was wearing protective masks. What was going on?

I went home, thoroughly annoyed that people didn’t seem to care if they spread the virus, and again returned to relax in front of the tube. That was when my jaw dropped and I broke into a cold sweat as I watched Trump, giving an apparent replay of his 2016 acceptance speech that everyone now knew was nothing but hot air and total lies or alternate facts as he would have you believe.

“To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people,” Trump said while somehow keeping a straight although maniacal face as I couldn’t help but keep my cookies intact. “It’s time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I am reaching out to you for your guidance and your help, so that we can work together and unify our great country.”

Then it hit me like the proverbial brick shithouse, like a lightning bolt, like an earthquake, this sense of de ja vu. This wasn’t November 2020, it was Nov. 9, 2016, the day after Trump was elected by winning the electoral college although he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes. I had somehow been transported back to 2016 and I was somehow cursed to relive over and over and over the next four nightmarish years.

I screamed but no words came out. I looked for help but none was there. And then suddenly, it was all over as I woke up from the dream, bathed in sweat and sticking to the sheets as I breathed a mountainous sigh of relief knowing that I would not have to relive four years in a trance of sadness and anger, just like the groundhog.

So I got up, brushed my teeth, shaved and got dressed, grabbed my mask and headed to the car to drive to Dunkin’ Donuts. I arrived to see that the workers and the customers all wore masks and I was relieved, to say the least, that there was a sense of community where all cared for his or her neighbors. I got small hot with milk, a sausage, egg and cheese wrap and got in my Honda and headed home.

I turned on the radio and switched to NPR where a commentator was talking about tomorrow’s election and the likelihood that Trump would lose, Uncle Joe would win in a landslide and the nation would once again become a wonderful, promising, honest, brave, clean and reverent place to live and raise healthy, bright children just like at Lake Wobegone.

I slept well that night, confident that the Trumpian years in hell would be over and that finally, I could breathe and feel that the world will be good, after all.

The next morning, I awakened and began the same routine that always gave me comfort.

I brushed my teeth, shaved and got dressed, grabbed my mask and headed to the car to drive to Dunkin’ Donuts. I arrived to see that the workers and the customers all wore masks. I got my traditional small hot with milk, a sausage, egg and cheese wrap and was soon back in my Honda and headed home.

On the way home, as was my habit, I turned on the radio and switched to NPR where a commentator was talking about tomorrow’s election and the likelihood that Trump would lose, Uncle Joe would win in a landslide and the nation would once again become a wonderful, promising, honest, brave, clean, reverent place to live.

I rubbed my eyes, felt my knees shake and a massive pain grew in the pit of my stomach like a cancerous tumor at the realization that just like yesterday, this was again Nov. 3, 2020, and I was cursed to remain living on the same day for eternity, an eternity of seeing Trump’s pornographic grin and knowing that he and I and the rest of the sorry world were doomed and never to see if Uncle Joe did actually win.

And now I realized that I would have to have a colonoscopy every day for eternity and I didn’t know which was worse, the colonoscopy or Trump. I decided I would have a colonoscopy every hour if it meant that Trump was no longer president, that’s how much I can’t stand him.