The Grassy Knoll, Part Deux

 August 29, 2020

I just woke up from a dream. Darn glad none of it was true, either.

Sharon and I won a trip to the White House. When Obama was President.

We were escorted into a large conference room, where several other couples from other nations were gathered. They must have had a draw in their country too. They were having an uproarious time together even though nobody understood a word anyone else was saying. Except their spouse, that is. It seemed to be a good trip to bring couples closer together. They burst into a bout of extra-hearty laughter, and I gathered it was at the expense of one poor fellow who had done something somehow culturally off, and all the wives were laughing at him, while all the other husbands were laughing because it was him and not them.

Now we were ushered to a large table, and I found myself seated next to, none other than the POTUS himself. He was elaborating something to the assembly and gesticulating somewhat with his hands. As he orated in discourse, he stifled a small burp under his breath. He went on a little longer and then finished, to enthusiastic applause from the assembled couples, 90 percent of which didn't comprehend a single word he had uttered. In hindsight, I think that explains a lot. I wasn't actually paying any attention myself, because, after all, it was only Obama, and I was just there to see the White House.

A question and answer period followed, with translators, and he graciously answered each of their questions. A larger burp escaped his lips, and I now knew what the problem must be. Having recently had quite a bout with acid reflux myself and all the symptoms that accompanied it, I had become quite an authority on the condition, so I pro-offered my expertise. I leaned over to him and quietly said, "Excuse me, Mr. President, but are you suffering from excessive gas? It could be acid reflux".

He shook his head with that closed lip, corners of the mouth down expression of denial we are all familiar with from him; "No, it's nothing; just a passing little thing I have from time to time". I just took his word for it. I wonder now many people have regretted that?

Anyway, suddenly Sharon and I found ourselves being hastily escorted out to a helicopter pad, and into a sporty looking chopper, with none other than Barry himself as pilot. He chose us, because we were the only ones who could understand him without a pesky translator. Off we went. We quickly ended up out of D.C., and into the surrounding Virginia countryside. It turned out the President liked cows, because he started buzzing them, diving steeply towards them at hair raisingly high speeds, and getting far too close to the ground for a safe recovery. I was sitting beside him, and I looked back at Sharon. She was clutching her seat, too. After a particularly frightening view of a very green, grassy hillside (I saw every blade), and the cows scattering in a panicked, fan-shaped dispersal, the farmer in me had to speak up, and I said, "Excuse me, Mr. President, but cows running blindly like that are scared, and they could break a leg in a chuckhole..."

He waved me off with a broad dismissal of his arm, alarmingly not gripping the joystick at that moment, "NAH," *BURRRP* "they don't mind it a bit".

The new reality that we were trapped in a high powered, fast, and very agile whirlybird with a very inebriated pilot didn't exactly dawn on us bright and sunny. Yes, the current POTUS was three sheets to the wind, and we were going to make the national news as a side note, dying with him in a fiery helicopter crash into a hillside in rural Virginia. It might have ended up more than a side note, because the biased media would never admit that slob was actually drunk, so they'd somehow blame it on me, and I wouldn't exactly be there to defend myself, now would I? Have I ever told you how much I despise the media?

Getting back to the ordeal, after a few more terror-stricken, nearly vertical, close up views of the undulating terrain of eastern Virginia, it came to me that 'The Grassy Knoll' was about to take on a whole new, modern meaning, and I was going to be a part of it, literally.

Somehow, after surviving one exceedingly terrifying and erratic flight, footage of which MUST have got on someone's cell phone somewhere, with the tips of the blades mere inches from disaster several times, after a seeming eternity, we finally made it back to the White House, and whacked down gratefully, but not gracefully, on the pad.

We were taken into the Oval Office, and I rather undiplomatically addressed the CIC about his alcoholic revelry, and how it nearly cost us all our lives. He sat behind his desk, hanging on to it, because he apparently didn't like the way it was moving on him at the time. He became uncharacteristically humble and transparent, and admitted to us that the media focusing on his two cats was too much for him, and he turned to drink to escape the pressure. I actually had pity on the guy, and gave him a pep talk as I polished the brass plaque on his desk declaring him Commander in Chief. Restored to his former glory, he stood up, straightened his shirt collar, and brushed my hand away from the plaque, re-assuming his role and authority and air of 'I can take care of that'. To reward me for my efforts, he grabbed a large pair of pliers preloaded with a medallion of the White House, and seized my arm and summarily applied it and dismissed us, more important things now at hand. I made an absolutely herculean effort to stifle my scream, and, with Sharon at my side, made a dignified but rather speedy exit, holding my breath.

Once outside the door and a safe distance away, I shook the windows with my "yeeeeOOOOWWW!!!" The four and a half inch long pin affixing the medallion to my aching and throbbing arm must have been intended for going through a couple of layers of Carhartt-type outerwear. Or army tires. But not into a BARE ARM, even if it was a Scottish Canuck's! That stupid drunken SOB...

I gingerly withdrew the long, rather thick, and very bloody pin, and promptly passed out.

The waiting room in the hospital was packed. We had quite the story to tell, and it caught the ear of an army nurse from the Maritimes. She 'tsk-tsk'd such an amateurish and reckless application of a pin, and said, "Look at your arm now. See that new one? You didn't even feel it, did you? That identifies a field casualty, and has to be done to not cause them any more trauma. If they die it doesn't matter, but if they survive, it can't hurt. It'll be ready to come out in a month or so".

I looked down, and, sure enough, there was a four-legged steel spider, cinched tightly into my arm right next to the exit wound from the former and recent foreign object application, with a square piece of pale pink paper attached to it to identify where the unfortunate sap came from and what had happened to him. That unfortunate sap was now me and I was stuck with this creepy new thing in my arm for a month. Or so.

I woke up clutching my arm, darn glad I wasn't in D.C., and with a new reason to not ever go there.