All Wet

All Wet

 

The ship, of which Barack Obama was the captain, struck what felt like an iceberg.  But at that latitude in the north Atlantic, icebergs had long since disappeared, hauled off to quench the thirst of Arabian and Kuwaiti populations.  In fact we had hit an oil platform, out of service, and drifting in the ocean, its crew long since conscripted into the green-energy industry.  Capt. Obama had just left the ballroom, where he had re-assigned the first-class cabins of the rich to the steerage passengers, who hailed him as their hero.

     Panicked, I leaped into a lifeboat with an Illinois state flag at its stern.  Big mistake.  Just as I lowered the boat into the water, some scoundrel emerged from under a tarp, yelling, “Oh no, ye don’t!”  The man threw a line back up to the sinking ship, where it snagged a bollard.  He turned to me, and said, “I’m guvner heah, and I’m goin’ wiv my capt’in!”

     I jumped into the ocean then, wearing a life vest labeled “Property of Du Page County.”  Curiously, and much to my consternation, this life vest had weights attached to it, marked “Rec Center Assessment,” and “utility surcharge.”  I looked up at the fool on the lifeboat.  “Heah!” he yelled, lifting an anvil.  “Ye may as well fund the teachers’ pensions too if yar gonna drown!”

     I squirmed out of my vest, and swam all night to a raft.  “Where am I?” I asked the men who were paddling the raft. 

     “You’re on what’s left of American conservatism,” one of them replied.  “If you’re staying, you’re going to have to paddle.”

     And so I did—but not before writing a letter, which I placed inside a plastic bottle.  Murmuring a prayer, I cast the bottle into the waves. 

     You’re reading that letter.