On my short walk from Banana Belt Properties to buy The San Francisco Chronicle at the Anchor Bay Store, I passed two young men standing on the sidewalk. As I went by the taller – dark haired, tall and thin, with a short scraggly beard and unkempt clothes – asked me: “Are you the guy with the Bush bumper sticker?”
“Yep, that’s me” I replied. I have a Bush/Cheney sticker that I put on the bumper of my 1999 Toyota Rav-4 shortly after I bought it used in 2000.
“How do you justify that?” he asked.
I assumed he meant how could I justify supporting President Bush. Since I was in a hurry to buy my newspaper and get home – I was already very late for lunch, and was sure Alice was very worried (she was) – I answered: “I’m an American. I don’t have to justify anything to you,” and walked on.
“Oh yes you do,” he called after me.
I hurriedly bought my newspaper, and walked out and back towards my car, eager to have a few more words with the impertinent young man. I was going to remind him that over 2.5 million Americans voted for President Bush in a total of two elections than voted for his Democrat opponents, that he had received more votes in 2004 than any president ever, and unlike Bill Clinton, had received over 50 percent of the votes.
My purpose in presenting these facts was to demonstrate I had a lot of company in supporting President Bush. Unfortunately the young man was nowhere to be seen.
Pity. I was eager to be argumentative, and particularly wanted to remind him that we hadn’t been attacked since 9/11. I’m sure I would have been wasting my time and words, and in retrospect it was a good thing he was gone.
Alice would not have appreciated me being any later than I already was.
I saw him again a couple of days later. He was getting into an old car I had noticed earlier when I walked past it. It had been vacant at that time, but it caught my attention because it looked like someone had been living in it. Probably the young man was.
He drove off apparently without noticing me.
No comments:
Post a Comment