Overheard at Booth 4: Molasses

... and now I can't find the poem that I wrote for mi suegra, for her memorial.  And it's not like the poem was even any good, but it had everything that needed to be said, and the service is this weekend and I can't find it and I can't rewrite it because I know it will never be as good as the first draft, that I should have so that I could edit it, and I feel like I'm frozen, stuck, wading through molasses.  It's been this way all my life with my writing, whenever I've tried to write anything, it all gets ... stuck.

Overheard at Table 3: What We Are Fighting For and What We Need

Billie's Mom: I'm going before the school board so I can get them to change the policy so you kids can be called by your preferred pronouns.

Billie: Thanks, Mom, but more than that, we just wanna go to school without the fear of getting slaughtered by a mass shooter.

Overheard at Table 2: Alarms

... sorry I'm late.  Wife's out of town and my admin forgot to set the alarm.

Overheard at Table 5: School Mask Mandate

Clara:  I'm just gonna take my kid out of school.

Marta: Why?

Clara: They're putting in a mask mandate. 

Shelba: Those Socialist bastards!

Marta: But it'll stop the COVID spread.

Clara: The school can't tell me how to raise my child.

Shelba: ... and masks don't work anyway.  I know a person who wore TWO masks and still got COVID.

Marta: Well, my kid has autism and is also prone to infection, so if everyone wears a mask, he'll be protected from possibly catching it.

Clara: Well my kid has autism too and he can't function if anything take away his personal liberty.  He can't wear a mask or he'll have a panic attack and become uncontrollably violent.

Shelba: And my kid has autism and if she can't see other kids' faces, she can't work on her social cues.   

Clara: Your friend who got COVID, is she better now?

Shelba: Oh yeah, she's fine.

Marta:  That's good.

Shelba: Yeah.  She gave it to her husband though and he died.

Clara: Oh, sorry to hear that.

Shelba: It's OK.  He was all for the mask mandates in school.

Clara: Ah!  A Socialist.

Shelba: Looks like.

Marta: Was he autistic as well?

Overheard at Booth 3: Morning Drive

I wouldn't say I'm manic or unstable or anything, but some days I'm driving to work on the highway and I'm like "'Here's a finger for you' and 'here's one for YOU' and 'here's TWO for you, ya prick!'" and other days I'm waving out the window like, "'Hi guys!  How y'all doin'? Lookin great today! Wasssssupppp!"

 

Overheard at Booth 4: Sacred Texts

So if the Constitution is a divinely-inspired text, then what does that make the other sacred texts?

What do you mean?

I mean, what's to stop other things that people have written from being considered inspired by God?  The Magna Carta.  The Koran.

A billion people already think the Koran is written by God.

Right!  So, it's like, is everything written by God, or nothing?

Who says it's an all or nothing?  What we've got is everyone arguing on what is or is not written by God ... if there IS anything such as a "god" ... and it's all just who thinks what is or isn't.  Personal opinion.

But OK, just sticking with the Constitution ... why are Conservatives saying that IT is written by God?

Because they wanna control minds.  Easy to control minds when it's got the force of some divine Creator of Everything behind it.  Then they can easily make the leap of "God wrote the Second Amendment, so that's how that 17 year old kid could kill two people who were coming at him with a skateboard."

Overheard at Booth 4: JSTOR Article from 1994

Found one document, from 1994.  Have not read it yet because I don't want to shell out $40, but in the second paragraph, it seems to indicate that the idea of the Divinely Inspired Constitution did exist, but was more fringe, beyond the majority who believed it merely to be written by brilliant Enlightened minds.

 

 

 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23919344