Politics on the Run

Life in the Boomer Lane was in the airport last week and decided to get a bag of popcorn for her flight (Indiana, with sea salt). The airport store she saw was run by Amazon. LBL hoped that meant that she could pay for the popcorn and Amazon would deliver it to her seat after she boarded. Instead, she saw that there was a turnstile to enter, one in which she had to swipe her VISA card. She did so.

The moment that happened, the woman working in the store began to congratulate her for being able to read, then launched into a tirade about “young people these days who can’t read or do anything else. right” And on and on. (OK, she’s getting tired of explaining the system to people). The tirade followed LBL while she searched for the popcorn. LBL will admit that she felt the need to contribute to the conversation with a tiny joke, the one about the teens who, when confronted with a landline, are helpless (Here, LBL silently apologized profusely to her two teenage grandsons.)

LBL’s joke simply fed the flames. The store woman announced that all the ills besetting young folks (and the world in general) was due to the notion of political correctness. (OK, she’s a Trumper). This led to her telling LBL that her own family, steeped in military service since before the US became a country, knew how to both live and die correctly. Apparantly, no one else did. (OK, now she’s a warmongering Trumper).

LBL held up the bag of popcorn and simply pointed to it, as she was now afraid to actually say anything. The woman paused her litany of the generations of family members who were happy to spend their lives fighting and dying, to say, “You don’t have to do anything now. You can just leave.” LBL walked out, followed by details of the American Indian Wars. (Shit, now she’s a warmongering Trumper who hates Indians). The woman followed her out of the store.

Thinking she was safe from the woman following her all the way to the plane, LBL said, “You know, people nowadays haven’t been tested like past generations have been. Former generations may have seemed tougher, but that’s because they had to be. It’s a different world now.”

LBL was wrong (about the woman following her, not about the toughness of past generations). More wars followed her for several more steps, culminating in “Well, political correctness is going to kill us all off anyway.” (OK, we are back to that.) LBL couldn’t let this one go. Now 10 feet along, she said, “Oh, I seriously think there are some other issues that are going to do us in way sooner than that.” Thinking this was the actual end of the conversation, she turned and began to walk in earnest.

The woman’s voice boomed out at her at maximum decibel level, as LBL approached the line in front of the Starbucks. “Absolutely! Like keep your laws off my body!” (LBL, as well as Trump, the military, American Indian hatred, and all other forms of evil that were destroying LBL’s sanity, stopped dead in their tracks.). LBL turned back, shook her fist and yelled (for the first time in over five decades) “Right on!” She still has no idea what actually happened during that entire conversation, but she felt like she had just somehow bonded with one of her worst nightmares.