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The Way We Were

"If Mitt Romney should do it, then I should do it, too!", I thought.

Mitt Romney had the opportunity to come clean about his past
as a Schoolyard Bully, about the time he and several of his friends
took down a smaller kid whom they seemed to think was gay,
and cut off his long hair.  Ol' Mitt did not seem to remember
what all his friends remembered, but to the extent that he might have
remembered, had he remembered, he did admit that he was
a fun-loving guy, full of pranks and other savage behavior.

We are sorting through our belongings, getting ready to move,
and in the course of unearthing old memories, we found a picture
of me as a clergyman in California.  Clues suggest that I was
about 32, absolutely clean-shaven, and wearing a cassock, surplice, and stole.

Most of the coffee gang laughed, quite as one might at the sight
of a dog playing poker, not so much because the dog was good at it,
but because the dog could do it, at all.  Joel sputtered, protested,
and prayed to God that he did not disgrace himself at the table.
It was a study in worldview shift:  he could not decide whether
he was seeing what he was seeing, not what I had to do with
the clean-shaven, god-fearing, serene figure in the photograph.

He did not say so, but it was plain that he was shaken.  As
Elizabeth Kubler Ross might have predicted, it started with denial.
It went far beyond what Kubler Ross had understood:
I still do not know whether Joel even likes me, anymore.

"Minniver Cheevy, child of scorn," I thought, "grew lean
while he assailed the seasons, but Joel is shifting worldviews."

I am glad I did it, glad I admitted right out loud that if I had done
anything that offended anybody, I was very sorry for them.
It was useful not to recall whether I had ever behaved in such a way
as might have done harm to basic science or elementary reason.

"Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty!", Joel sang, louder than he needed to.
I had not realized that he still retained such a reservoir of incantations
to help him through moments like that.  He either crossed himself,
of scratched himself.  He ducked and bobbed like an acolyte.

I am asking those of you who have time and nothing to do
to keep Joel in your thoughts and prayers.  He had a hard morning.

John, and Jeff and the rest of us at the table, have agreed
that, if he is not better in a couple of days, we will take him down
and cut his cap off.  Nothing serious.  Just a prank.  

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