Popcorn & Rootbeer

  Bean bag "chairs" and hair combing.  A brother finally home.  

  "What's Dad specializing in?"

  "We're just watching TV."

  Daddy's crossed feet at the foot of the bed, the brother hung his stripped off tie there.  On Dad's feet.  Dad kicked it off.  A sister pulled from the hairbrush and hung it next to my Dad's.

  "Daddy's specializing in gestures for this round of debate."

  A frustrated noise, "Aw, still debates?"

  Move your feet lose your seat held us in place.

  The "talk show" droned on and on.  Then suddenly Daddy sat up and folded his legs "Indian Style" 

  "Holy shit." Both Dad and my brother said at the same time.

  Now that's a gesture.

  Mom!

  I'm busy.

  You gotta come here.

  Do I honey?

  Might should.  She started to put the flossing of teeth down but it got stuck, Holy SHIT, stop saying that, she came towards us with the floss stuck in her teeth and the box.

  "What gesture was it?"

  Daddy made us all sit and be quiet.  "Maybe they'll replay it."

  When they did the man's hand was partially obscuring face.  "Now that looks like the middle finger to me," Daddy said.  The middle child looked up from coloring, "Sure does."

  As a country we were threads not fully attached to pinwheel and pinball machine.  There were ways in which the yellow ribbons had changed us so profoundly from black&white, an orderly red, white, and blue.  Censors and moderators in communications took takes, re- and re- shot, angles and lighting, but nobody seemed "perfect" enough to mint the new us, nobody was measuring up to be the one.

  Everything got the left, right, criminal test.  And a running key of both compassionate moderate-ism and building party was "safety".  Jerks and assholes were in the "gray area" of "behavior" on the roads and at events, formal and informal.  Everywhere people would bring up some bit of news or cultural event and "rally" into good guys/bad guys.  The world was demanding a different kind of tough even from the "greatest".

  Dark silouhettes in front of monitors watched.  Took breaks.  Need to stretch my legs.  A room would tense and relax a half a degree at the comings and goings.

  Electric typewriters screamed filler stories and "puff pieces".  Comments and opinions were a tuning fork soundscape.  Clothing, gone more and more un-drycleaned for most people.  Food, less and less home-cooked.

  I don't give a shit.

  I'm interested in your opinion.

  The word "opinion" had taken on the undertones of judge and jury.

  Why mine?  Normal question since everyone trying to keep hands clean and be like Teflon to mud and blood and guts.

  The short answer is that you're an outsider.

  Measured breathing, measuring days and nights into proofs of someday.

  On the screen, a whole lot of people not in business suits and not in Sunday clothes either, but "dress clothes" nonetheless.  Who are they?  

  Who they are doesn't matter as much as what they are.

  TeRRORists?

  Some.

  And what else?

  Clerics and, a video tape was swapped for another, these are some of the groups trying to position themselves as "legitimate" and often calling themselves westernized.

  A man stood up.  "Are they all running to be president?"

  Might be.

  "That's different."