Author Richard Cahill's Website--Living By Our Motto:"There Are No Stupid Questions, Just Stupid People Asking Questions Everybody else already knows the answer to."

I was at the US Passport office the other day, providing company and entertainment for my Significant Other as she waited to get her application vetted by the authorities, when I felt the call of nature. The nearest men's room was only a few steps away.

The passport office is located in my neighborhood in the county administration building, and the men's rooms in the county building are a fairly nice place to relive oneself, compared to other men's rooms that I've used, especially those in bars and stadiums. There the need for human males to void their bladders increases in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol they've consumed, while their ability to hit their porcelain targets decreases in inverse proportion to the same. The resulting spray-fest would put a pack of roaming coyotes to shame. It renders those environs slippery and odoriferous.

The passport office restroom was clean and sedate by comparison, probably because most of its users are sober at the time and also because a government employee janitor who likely makes nearly as much a year as a college professor regularly scrubs it out. After calmly performing the task at hand, I hit the button on the wall to flush the unit.

Nothing happened. I hit the button a couple more times before my palm was sore. Ordinarily I, like any other male, would depart at this point, leaving my waste unflushed. Those are the sorts of problems that the county janitor and his friend, the county plumber, get overpaid to deal with. It was then that I noticed the fine print stenciled above the facility:

This is a flush free urinal.

My first thought was well, what isn't? A stand of bushes, the shoulder of the road, a couch at a fraternity house—all could be employed in exactly the same manner, except they are not accorded the dignity of a footnote. When the earliest male humans were granted by evolution the ability to walk upright, they were also gifted with the ability to pee standing up. We immediately took advantage of this boon from God or Darwin to cast our waters everywhere upon the young Earth, marking our migration to the world's furthest corners with our scents. No rock, no stream, no puddle was left unaugmented by the yellow element. In some men the urge to void atavistically is still strong; I had a cousin who would not urinate indoors unless he had no other alternative. He would deliberately step outside a residence with a perfectly functional toilet to pee behind the doghouse. His favorite external spot was a deep snowbank. He claimed nothing gave him more inner peace than the experience of watching his personal steam curl out of virgin snow.

Of course he always attempted to write his name as well.

The discovery of the fermentation and distilling processes made the need to control the location of relief stations obvious. The earliest drinkers no doubt experimented with urinating on other cavemen, or bear cubs, or the clan's only source of fire. Their spiritual descendants still live among us. Just run "man urinates" as a search on You Tube and watch what pops up, if you don't believe me. Designating certain bushes, rocks or holes in the ground as rest stations was a start; as civilization progressed so did the design of outhouses. The invention of indoor plumbing made frostbitten bottoms a thing of the past but made accidentally micturating  on the throw rug or in the bathroom trash can  a problem for the foreseeable future.

Now the flush-free urinal means we have come full circle. Despite being herded into tiled rooms and cut off from nature, we males are nonetheless now back to relieving ourselves into what is essentially a porcelain hole in the ground. I returned glumly to my seat in the passport waiting room.

"Keep an eye on that number," my S.O. told me. "I have to use the ladies room."

"Lucky you," I replied.

Now that Obama's disastrous Libyan policies have ended with the death of international pariah Muhammar Quaddafi, the liberation of the country and the successful conclusion of the NATO mission without a single life lost by an American or allied serviceman, the field of candidates for the Republican nomination for President were quickly and rightly describing the result as an appalling failure on the part of the President. A sampling of quotes from these Republican leaders follows:

Michele Bachmann: "It had nothing to do with Obama. It had everything to do with the Libyan people's Constitutional Second Amendment right to bear arms and shoot dictators in drainage pipes.  The Libyan people were merely exercising their God-given rights as Americans, or Africans, whichever they are."

Herman Cain: "What's going to happen as a result of the Obama Administration's mismanagement of the Libyan situation is now Libyans are going to want to immigrate here illegally, especially if they are relatives of Quaddafi. We need to build an electrified wall between us and Libya as soon as possible, with a sign on it saying "This Fence Will Kill You!" in English and in Libyanese."

Mitt Romney: "I would have engaged our allies at the earliest possible moments, arrived at a consensus with other world leaders, kept American involvement to aerial bombardment so as not to risk American lives and let the Libyan people overthrow Quaddafi by themselves, just like Obama did. Only I would claim it was completely different."

Rick Perry: "I don't know what I would have done different, except for sure I wouldn't have pardoned him. Or those guys what drug him around in that pickup truck. I wouldna pardoned them, either."

Jon Huntsman: "As you know, I was once Obama's Ambassador to China. If I had been his Ambassador to Libya, this never would have happened, because I would have stabbed Quaddafi in the back. Do you find that hard to believe? Don't."

Newt Gingrich: "Like Quaddafi, I too was once driven mad by power. I bought jewels for my mistresses and signed six-figure publishing contracts. I lorded it over a mighty nation and laid my enemies low. I only ruled for four years though, and that dude had forty-two as king of the hill. Nice run, bro."

Rick Santorum: "Many people aren't aware that abortion was illegal in Libya under Quaddafi. Despite all the torture, terrorism, pillaging and repression that Quaddafi seemed to enjoy, and which made him one of the most hated men on the planet, let's not forget he was pro-life, like me. Was it really Obama that did him in, or was it the abortion industry settling a score? You decide."

At this writing at least four Republican Presidential candidates have said they felt they were "called by God" to run for the Presidency. Although these candidates (Perry, Bachmann, Cain and Santorum) have been reticent about how and when they received their calls, for example, whether they were personal cell, work phone or calls at home, or maybe just text messages from on high, they have made it clear that they, like Jake and Elwood Blues, are on missions from above.

The phenomena of the Alpha and Omega urging individual Republicans to run for the Oval Office raises several interesting questions, the most obvious being why did He ask at least four of them? This reporter turned to a recognized authority on the mind of God, the Dr. Reverend Oral Willkie, head of the Thomas E. Dewey School of  Theology, to probe the mysterious ways of the Lord regarding the GOP.

Why do at least four Republican candidates claim to have the Creator's personal directive to launch campaigns for the White House?

"God has always used different messengers to deliver different messages. Each of the Republican candidates is carrying a different form of His Word to the American people."

Why the Republican party? Is God a Republican?

"God is a registered independent, but because He, as many sincere believers already suspect, is a white, Christian, gun-owning American who lives in a rural or suburban area, He is most comfortable supporting the Republican Party."

What messages do the candidates each convey?

"Rick Perry, having presided over 241 executions and counting while governor of Texas, brings the message that God is not upset with anyone for supporting capital punishment. He, after all, invented capital punishment, and applies it inevitably to each one of us. The whole "Thou Shalt Not Kill" thing deserved a footnote, except nobody used footnotes back in the day. Chiseling just the body of a text onto a rock was tough enough."

What about Michele Bachmann?

"The Bachmann candidacy conveys the message that God likes women, too, especially women that obey their husbands and woman who have unwanted children as a result of rape or incest. Bachmann's candidacy is God's way of saying 'You go, girls. Yeah, you go.  Go clean up the kitchen and make Me a snack."

Herman Cain's candidacy would seem to make God a little bit uncomfortable, especially if He is the sort of white suburban Guy you make him out to be.

"On the contrary, the Cain candidacy is the most important of all. First, God is saying it's okay to be cool with black people, especially black people who don't do what white people hate, like make rap music or invent touchdown celebrations, and do do what white people like, like mass-producing and delivering tasteless pizzas. Secondly, because Cain is the man-killing electrified fence across Mexico candidate, God is telling us that it's fine to hate Mexicans, because they speak Spanish and have cornered all the country's landscaping jobs."

And Rick Santorum?

"That was obviously a partially dropped call. God wants Rick Santorum to be Vice-President."

Why doesn't God talk to the other Republican candidates? Ron Paul or Newt Gingrich, for example?"

"God won't talk to Ron Paul because Paul wants to legalize drugs and God knows that there's nothing s like an excessive prison sentence for mere drug possession to get someone to start praying to Him, especially in those  first few moments in the prison shower. Nobody talks to Gingrich."

Is their any reason to think that God will start calling Democrats?

"No. If you're a Democrat and you get a call from God, He's probably drunk-dialing again. It's not likely, though. He's sworn off that, ever since He called Jimmy Carter."

Florida state representative Brad Drake has introduced legislation to re-institute execution by firing squad as a death penalty option in the Sunshine State because he overheard the idea at a Waffle House restaurant.

Immediately this reporter contacted a spokesperson for the Waffle House chain. He was wildly enthusiastic about the idea. "Bringing back firing squads is just the latest example of a great concept being first floated at a Waffle House," he said.

I didn't know Waffle Houses were such hotbeds of intellectual ferment.

"You just haven't been paying attention. Syrup, hotcakes and bacon are known natural brain foods. Every single waffle, whether square or round, contains in its lines and rectangles an intellectually stimulating natural geometry lesson. Pythagoras was staring at a waffle when he came up with his famous theorem, believe it or not."

The ancient Greeks made waffles?

"Tons of 'em. Ate 'em by the plateful while they were braining up to invent Western civilization. Aristotle, Plato, Demosthenes, Bucephalus…all of them could wreak havoc on a stack of waffley goodness before you could say "I think, therefore I want more syrup."

You're aware Bucephalus was a horse?

"And a smart beast indeed. But let's get back to the death penalty issue. The Waffle House is fully behind the restoration of firing squads. We're prepared to sponsor."

I didn't know Florida was looking for sponsors for its executions.

"Why not? Privatization of public services is the wave of the future. The trouble with lethal injection is that it's  dull, dull, dull. The condemned's eyes just close like he was watching the School Board Channel. If you're lucky, he poops himself. Big whoop. With firing squads, private enterprise is going to want in on the action.

But what do waffles have to do with the death penalty?

"Try and follow me here. We're not going to try to ace our fellow corporate citizens out of the execution action. There's a drama to death by firing squad that lends itself to sponsorship. What about the blindfold? What do you think Nike's going to pay to have "Just Do It" printed on that?"

Possibly you've been eating too many waffles.

"And if Nike won't cough up with the big bucks, we've got Kellog's waiting in the wings. Snap, Crackle and Pop! Ammunition makers will fall all over themselves to supply the rounds. "Teflon Bullets—They're Not Just for Killing Cops Anymore." There's a message, my friend.

Representative Drake has suggested employees of the Florida Department of Corrections will carry out the executions. Do you think they should be wearing Waffle House uniforms?

"We'll go better than that. We will supply the actual executioners. We'll make more loot by filming a reality show about them. Long, intense conversations in a Jacuzzi about who gets the gun with the blank in it this time. We'll have at least one smokin' hot girl who always complains that the recoil from the rifles keeps bruising her enormous garbanzos."

Waffle House sounds like they're all in with the firing squad idea. You realize it hasn't become law yet?

"Yes, but we're prepared for that. If Florida won't do the sensible thing and bring back the firing squad, we're ready to build a heavy-duty waffle-maker."

You mean…

"Yes. A waffle maker capable of carrying out the will of the people of Florida."

Wouldn't that be cruel and unusual punishment?

"Cruelty is in the eye of the beholder. I have it admit, though, it would be damn unusual."

A 1961 Mercury Comet

I am a first-born son but my parents never had any intention of stopping with me; my status as an only child evaporated before I had any memory of being one and my family's private baby boomlet only topped out fourteen years later when the youngest of my siblings, number seven, was born. Our family was large by neighborhood standards but hardly huge; broods of eight or nine attended the same school and families with double digits of offspring were not unheard of.

We were poor, which my parents blamed on our numbers. When we asked them why we couldn't afford something we wanted from seeing it on TV, they would answer "Because there's seven of you!" resentfully, as if our appearance at their table was some sort of debilitating miracle and they were entirely innocent of our germinations. My father in particular, despite supporting all of us and building with his own hands half of the house we lived in, never seemed to regard incepting any of us as having been a particular good idea. He treated us all with doleful mistrust, as if we existed solely to sap his strength and capital, which we did, cheerfully and constantly. He was particularly aggravated by our borrowing his carpenter's tools to build tree forts and then leaving them in the grass to rust. As the oldest, I was held to a higher standard of responsibility, up to which I inevitably failed to live. By the time I was ready to drive at the age of sixteen, my father's suspicion that I existed only to wreck everything he owned had hardened into a certainty, but he nonetheless lent me his car to drive to my new girlfriend's house, twenty miles away in the neighboring state of Delaware.

Because they were poor, my parents drove used cars. In the case of my father, they were very well-used cars. He bought them from Lou at Lou's Junkyard. Lou would estimate which of the heaps his customers had sold him for scrap had enough mechanical integrity remaining that it could transport my father back and forth from his work, a distance of nine miles each way, for a few months or possibly a year before it completely gave out, for the few hundred bucks my father could pay him.

My mother drove the better car, usually a station wagon. Not that better meant perfect; having a car that started up every single time its key was turned in the ignition was not something we could afford. Often turning the key in the wagon resulted in mere mechanical clicking and then silence. This was our signal that the morning was about to be re-scheduled.

After I became a more experienced driver, I was sometimes called to push the wagon out of the driveway and hop in it before it started tracking down the steep hill that fronted our home when this happened, so the machine would kick-start. It's necessary to get a car with an automatic transmission going about thirty miles an hour  before it will begin to run on its own. Fortunately we had the convenient downgrade, but it had a couple of tight turns in it, so the task was part chore, part thrill ride. Usually the engine would roar to life before I had to take the last hairpin without an assist from the power steering, but not always. After it started I would drive it down the hill and around the block and leave the wagon rumbling in the driveway so my mother could run her errands.

That was well after my first drive in my dad's car, however. His car when I was first licensed was a decrepit Mercury Comet, dirty white embellished with pitted chrome. We youngsters disrespectfully called it the Vomit. He also at various points owned a purple Mustang that we called the Muskrat, a blue Ford Fairlane that we christened the Blue (slang term for a singular piece of excrement beginning with't') and a faded yellow Pontiac Bonneville, a full-size car back when that term really meant something, with a 450 cubic inch V-8 and the turning radius of the USS Vinson which we, in a tribute to the then already-fading Age of Aquarius, called the Yellow Submarine.

My father did not go in much for auto maintenance. The changing of fluids in his machines was a practice unknown to him. It probably wouldn't have helped much, anyway. We had a selection of automotive liquids in bottles in the garage; oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, anti-freeze. Occasionally we were called to add a few drops of fresh oil or anti-freeze to one of his cars. You could liken this to a hospice nurse administering a morphine drip. It didn't make the cars run longer, but it quieted them down.

I had found the Delaware girlfriend because she spent some weekends at her half-sister's house down the road. Her half-sister was much older and married to a teacher at the local technical school, a big man with big hands. I remembered the hands distinctly, because he had once jacked me up with them and accused me of throwing rocks at his house, a charge of which I was entirely innocent. Although by the time I started dating his teenage sister-in-law he had assured me that all was forgiven, the chance to kiss and fondle the object of my desire somewhere other than his rec room was one I took with alacrity. It seemed much safer.

I set off down one of the sections of I-95 that was then complete, keeping a steady speed and the wheels pointed evenly south. All went smoothly as I rolled through Wilmington. The first sign of trouble appeared as the tallish buildings of the city vanished from my rear view. A red light marked "Temp" began to glow on the dashboard. Naturally, I expected it to go back off, as all things that worked on my father's cars stopped working eventually, but just when this failed to happen an alarming spurt of white smoke shot out from under the hood, as if they had just elected a Pope there. The engine began to throb as if it, like me, was overfull of demanding hormones. Right before it stopped running, I managed to guide the car to an emergency stop at the side of the road.

The problem was analyzed later as being a thermostat frozen in the closed position. When this happens, no coolant can enter the engine, which results in it turning into a useless hot hunk of metal slag if run long enough, which I had done. The thermostat had probably been frozen since my father had owned the car; the car just didn't warm up enough on his short commute to work to blow up the engine. However, the attempted trip to the wilds of Delaware was enough to achieve metallic conflagration.

My father never forgave me for destroying the Comet. When I was in my forties, and had lived on the other side of the continent and further for twenty years, owning many cars of my own, he still handed me his keys with the air of a martyr if I needed to borrow his wheels when I returned to visit, convinced that any time I took his car out it would end like the first, that something in my driving style inevitably resulted in motor death.

My girlfriend did forgive me for not showing up for our date, and we engaged in many warm-blooded grapplings after that, until I dumped her before going off to college, convinced that many lusty couplings with intellectually gifted heiresses were possible with my scholarship package, and I didn't want to be encumbered by an emotional attachment to a townie. I was dead wrong about that. Maybe she knew that would happen. If I want to, I can ask. She found me on Facebook last year. Says she has some old pictures of us.

I asked her if there were cars in any of them.

During the recent controversy over Presidential candidate Rick Perry's family's ownership of a hunting camp in Texas that apparently advertised itself by a rock out front with the word "N-word Head" painted on it, a defender of the Governor against his critics' charges of racial insensitivity said that Perry "doesn't have a racist bone in his body."

The Governor said the offensive word was painted over by his father in the early eighties (although by then, of course, the governor was well old enough to paint over his own rocks). Some critics said the overpainting occurred much later, after the Guv's political career was well underway. It's not a point that's likely to be proved one way or the other.

The word painted on the rock has been referred to in several stories as the name of the camp. This is a mistake that could only be made by non-hunters. The average hunting camp could be described as a drinking camp with equal accuracy. Having a flask of whiskey in one's pocket seems small enough reward for sitting in a freezing duck blind before the sun comes up and when the day's hunt, successful or not, is finished, celebratory or consolatory consumption of alcohol can begin in earnest.  The rule of binge-drinking among males around a campfire is simple; the object of the exercise is to raise one's blood alcohol to the age at which one lost his virginity, preceded by a decimal point. Some drinkers can stop at .13 or .14, but most are going to be .17 or above and the truly socially awkward are not going to be able to stop until their BAC is in the point-twenties.

When getting this drunk with guns, the urge to fire them again, by way of either demonstrating success or excusing failure, can be overwhelming. No dumb animal is quite dumb enough to approach a campfire ringed by drunken humans with rifles, so a consolation target is needed. Political incorrectness also rises in direct proportion to spirits consumption, so a rock with N-word Head painted on it is a perfect target for a bunch of non-minority, heat-packing males deep in their cups. I am certain the rock is still pocked with bullet-holes, painted over or not.

Whether or not the Governor has a racist bone in his body as a result of being in the presence of that rock I can't say, although certain thinkers hold that everyone's a little bit racist, sometimes. The concept of a racist bone implies two things: First, you can have more than one of them and second, it's not limited to a particular unit of the skeletal system.

For example, a person could have his or her racist bone in the tiny bones of the inner ear. This results in them being annoyed when they hear Para continuar en español, pulse dos when they call the electric company, or when they are accidentally exposed to rap music.

A racist bone located in the feet means you are one of those people who move to the other side of the street when you see a minority male approaching you on the sidewalk.

The racist bone can be the same as the funny bone, sometimes called the humorous. This is the case with people who only tell jokes after they look around quickly to make sure no members of the group being joked about are within earshot.

When an individual's racist bone is next to the liver, it means he or she is smart enough to conceal their true opinion of other ethnic groups unless they are drunk, like Mel Gibson or Katt Williams.

A racist bone located in the finger is especially useful for drivers, both those who think that Asians can't drive and wish to express that opinion non-verbally and also for those who instinctively lock their doors when passing through the 'hood. Graffiti artists and guys who bring magic markers into bathroom stalls often have their racist bones located in their digits as well.

The most common location for the racist bone is between the brain and the palate. This bony mass is often quite extensive, capable of interfering with the brain's desire to modulate speech before racially-tinged utterances are made, rather than being forced afterwards to apologize for them. Public figures are especially susceptible to this condition.

There are people, of course, who are racist in every bone and therefore the opposite of Governor Perry. They used to think he was their kind of guy. He had all the right credentials. He's presided over 241 executions, included one of a man who was nearly unquestionably innocent. He smiled when they booed a gay American serviceman at a Tea Party debate. He didn't object when theycalled for the death of a hypothetical uninsured individual at the same event.  They've turned their back on Perry now, though, after they found out he wanted to let children brought to this country by illegal parents go to college at Texas rates, and that he doesn't want to build a fence across the entire southern border to keep Mexicans out. He uttered the phrase "Have a heart," when referring to illegal immigrants and now his chance of being the Republican nominee for President has nearly vanished.

Too late, Rick Perry has found out it's not about the heart. It's about the bone.

The author is currently too busy dealing with the demands of being a non-celebrity, i.e., working, to compose fresh commentary, so here’s an excerpt from one of his nearly unpublished works.    The remainder can be downloaded from the Books and Stories link above.

Single Dads were once as popular as living indoors. The whole thing started with a Single Dad, according to the best available report. He created His children and placed them in a beautiful garden. This automatically qualified him as a Single Dad, because if He had been married His Wife would have told Him this was a stupid idea, just like your wife would never let your kids play in your formal dining room, which is why they always asked you if they wanted to do it. The Original Kids trashed the place, naturally, just like your kids broke the doors off the china closet. The Original Dad punished them, instead of getting punished Himself, for letting the kids in there in the first place, which the Original Wife, if She had existed, would have arranged. He gave his children The Original Time Out, which, according to many respected theologians, is still going on.

PRIMITIVELY SPEAKING

Life was short, nasty and brutish, full of predators like saber-toothed tigers and packs of huge prehistoric wolves, in contrast to the modern condition, where life is long, nasty and brutish, full of predators like suicide bombers and reality TV hosts. In the old days, Single Dads were nearly as common as Single Moms. This was not because prehistoric divorce laws were more equitable. No one needed to get divorced, because almost always before you and your mate could stand sharing a cave together FOR ONE MORE STINKING MINUTE, the slower one of you would get eaten.

Thus it continued for many years, or Ice Ages, as they were called back then. The female would raise the male child until it was old enough to throw rocks, and then the male would take over, teaching his son how to throw rocks at stuff he could eat, and, equally importantly, how to throw rocks at stuff that could eat him, unless discouraged by being first hit by a rock.

Progress started with the invention of the spear. The invention of the spear was followed immediately by the invention of the practical joke. (“See this spear, son? Go stick it in that mammoth.”) War was invented. The first war was caused by a practical joke. (“See this spear, son? Go stick it in that Neanderthal.”) As long as the primary male occupations consisted of sticking sharp things into wild animals, making them hold still enough to eat, and the occasional spear fight with the neighbors, the value of fathering, even single fathering, was taken for granted.

The first disturbance in the primitive idyllic relationship between fathers and sons was the invention of tribal chiefs, which was considered such an astonishingly good idea, especially by the chiefs, that it was soon followed by the invention of pharaohs, emperors, kings, dukes, rajahs, earls, dukes, dukes of earl, princes, regents, dauphins, lords, lairds, knights, shahs, sheriffs, barons, moguls, prime ministers, dictators-for-life, middle management and other guys without formal titles who nonetheless had their own hordes.

In the case of most of the above, the father would designate his son as his successor as Leader Of The Pack. (This still goes on, especially in the Third World and the Republican Party) Whatever title he held, would pass to the kid upon his demise. Many sons were content to wait for this to happen. After all, if the old man went around dissing a whole continent by calling himself the Scourge of Europe, he was bound to tune in a little comeuppance sooner rather than later, leaving the kid to tone things down a bit and enjoy the family heirlooms, like France, in peace.

Some kids, however, were more ambitious. They saw Dad was having all the fun, starting wars, raping, pillaging, and not having to be home before dark, and they plotted to help nature along by arranging for something sharp to be stuck into Dad so they could take over the family business. Often the treacherous son was aided by Mom, who, frankly, was fed up with all the mead-drinking and slave-girl owning that Dad was putting on the primitive Visa card. Sometimes the kid did the job himself; sometimes he was aided by a hired assassin, who stabbed the king in the back as he slept. This assassin may be regarded as the forerunner of the modern Family Law attorney.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of dads and sons continued to hold lower ranking positions, such as serf, slave, servant, peasant, peon, penniless nomad, indentured laborer, horde member, assistant pillager, foot soldier, private, cannon fodder, bush beater, hod carrier, fisherman, laborer, day laborer, hard laborer, forced laborer, food taster and account executive. Sons had no choice but to emulate their fathers. A typical day consisted of backbreaking toil in the fields of the manor, followed by light starvation and towards evening, a twenty percent chance of bubonic plague. The Crusades were invented, and subsequently discarded. Everybody was pretty well relieved when America was discovered, and they realized they no longer had to starve to death tilling the fields of Europe. They could now die of dysentery crammed into the holds of ships on the way to America.

At first the settlement of the New World changed the father-son relationship very little. Colonial Dads taught their kids how to hunt, fish and kill redcoats; Pioneer Dads taught their kids how to fish, hunt and kill bears. Colonial Moms busied themselves making priceless antique heirlooms. Divorce was unheard of. A person who hated his or her spouse could still entertain a bracing optimism that they would outlive them, and the lack of advanced forensic science meant that if someone arranged a premature exit for their partner, everyone else was likely to accept the explanation that “She got et by a bar,” or “He got et by a redcoat,” as true.

Meanwhile another century meant the invention of earth-shaking new inventions, inventions that changed the course of history, such as the train, the steamboat, and the telegraph, none of which anybody uses today. Divorce, however, was not invented until after the movies were discovered and Hollywood was born. Divorce, like plastic surgery and giving your dogs haircuts, was a gift to the masses from the celebrity classes, and pretty soon everyone was doing it.

Of course, your celebrity marriages, then as now, lasted approximately as long as the NCAA basketball tournament, so there were seldom any celebrity kids whose welfare had to be considered. People with kids still didn’t get divorced until around the 70′s, when, after a decade of good vibes, good music, great protesting and the shimmering possibility of the creation of a world community based on pillars of peace and love, they discovered they had turned into their parents and were listening to disco. They headed for the courtroom in droves.

This led to discovery by modern jurisprudence that fathering was no longer necessary. Mom’s job had changed little; in fact her résumé had expanded. Besides raising and nurturing the kids, she now had concerns like air-freshening, waxy buildup and keeping her husband from using her loufa to scrub the car. True, the Little House On The Prairie had become the Little Split-Level In Buena Vista, but mothering had survived the transition.

Fathering, on the other hand, had imploded. Nobody wanted to follow in their father’s footsteps anymore. Dad was regarded as quaint and perhaps a little cracked. After he taught you how to throw a baseball, and, more importantly, how to hit the dirt when a baseball was thrown directly at your head (Dads still loved practical jokes) he had little more to offer the son in the way of career guidance. He, after all, worked in a big, sweaty factory with a just a few capital letters in its name (GE, GM, US Steel) while Junior wanted to draw a paycheck from a company with different initials, like MGM or UA. He dreamed of working for the movies. He couldn’t look to Dad for advice on how to pitch a treatment or whose phone calls he should return. Not that he could look to Mom for this, either, but Mom at least knew how to dump spaghetti out of a can, so when his mother and father filed papers so that they could quit sharing the same last name, Junior was usually ordered over to Mom.