BRAIN WASHING

Got to postpone Rache and talk about her tomorrow, and put my Wednesday Advice on Thursday ......

The busy bee commentators with their fly catchers swooping back and forth in the air, sooner or later catch a trend, a tale, a scandal. And a "maybe" and an "if" become a "when" and "why."

Whomp! The new t h i n g is caught. We're caught. A small story becomes a large one. A crime instantly gets people locking their windows, their doors. One look at a "maybe" murderer and he's guilty.

Look around! Be careful where you walk! For goodness sake, don't use Craig's List, in between measuring, percentagizing, grading our president, which is ... isn't really necessary but considering what we were overlooking for quite awhile, 100 days! Wow!

Is it, isn't it slightly deflating our swelling mounting concerns about torture, who did it, why, was it for a purpose other than getting us into a war?

Of course we're busy today with the flu epidemic of a long-ago war looming, ready to change all our plans for a night out, for socializing, going to school, or taking a vacation. Gathering numbers, numbers mounting, numbers being compared to other almost-but-not-quite epidemics.

(Remembering, of course, that masks can be bought at the drugstore, along with medication -- the supplies are OK -- where's the phone number of the doctor we'll call if ... symptoms abc or xyz appear.)

Of course we're not really worried, just wary.

WE KEEP UP WITH THE NEWS BECAUSE IT TELLS US WHAT TO BE CAREFUL OF, AND WHY NOT TO BE AFRAID, BUT... but ...

Well ...

We can handle it ... We're grown ups. I'm definitely a grownup. It's okay, it doesn't really hang us up, as long as we hang it on the clothes line -- it's spring -- it'll mostly dry, mostly evaporate in the sunshine!