Learning To Crawl
Little Riley is six months old now, and she’s starting to explore her world, stretch out her limbs and even begin to crawl, though for now it’s more like flopping around to get where she wants to go.
Watching her gain strength and confidence is a daily reminder that all humans take time to develop.
We adults develop, too, slowly, over time. We adapt to changed circumstances, assess our abilities and limitations, and reach out for more. It’s not as perceptible as it is in babies, but it’s there.
When she’s older, I hope to tell Riley the story of how we adults learned to crawl too: out from under our fear and uncertainty to take back our country. In my head it goes something like this:
“The year you were born, the people of the United States made a big mistake. They choose a bad man to be president. He had a scary orange face and he never really laughed, never really smiled. He had made a lot of fake promises he couldn’t keep, and he fooled a lot of people into thinking things would be better for them. Instead, things got much worse.
But over time, a lot of people began to realize that choosing him had been a mistake. They realized that the bad orange man had fooled them, and they were much worse off than before. Not everyone realized this, but many, many did.
“Mistakes can take time to fix, and at first the people weren’t sure how to do it. But there were some good leaders showing the way, and then the people got organized. They turned their fear into bravery, and they stood up to the bad orange man.
“It wasn’t easy. The president wanted to be a king. He wanted to make everyone obey only him. But that’s not how we do things in this country, and the people needed a strong reminder of that.
“And so right after you turned four, the people rose up and booted the bad orange man out, along with many of the people who had helped him. It was a scary time, and it had been a long four years. But now we have learned a big lesson, and if we can remember that lesson, we will be able to keep people like the bad orange man from ever becoming a king.
“And then the people of the United States lived happily ever after, talking mostly about who would win the Super Bowl, what happened on White Lotus Season 8, and spending time with their families and loved ones.
“The end.”
I'm praying that that bad man in office gets booted out before four years. But maybe that's another fairytale ending....
As long as we're imagining the scenario where he is booted out of office, how about making it:
Before your first birthday, the people had organized and demanded that this unfit senile demented man be removed because he was an embarrassment, did not know how to behave when he had guests and said mean things even to people who used to like us, and it was discovered that his rich friend, Musk, had falsified enough ballots to change the outcomes of not just the presidential race, but so many of the congressional and senate as well, that a new election was held. Harris won and the Democrats also got a majority in both the senate and the house.