For One Brief Shining Moment Only

Imagine for one, brief, shining moment that a wiener could think. (Not Anthony, of course, but all other wieners. Hot dogs. That sort of wiener.) And while we are at it, imagine that a wiener were happy to end up as part of a hotdog.

I am trying to think positively about how a sentient wiener might come to a happy end, given its options, short of photocopying itself into posterity.

I am driven to this meditation on the sensibilities of weenies by a recent picnic luncheon. I say, luncheon", although I never eat "luncheon". Sometimes I do eat lunch. The Wienermeister--we might call him--asked what I wanted, and I, thinking about dark mustard and onions and sauerkraut, said I would like a brat.

The Wienermeister pointed out that he had pickle-infused brats, and cheese brats, and ballpark franks, and even kosher hot dogs for Sol Rabinowicz, who is Jewish, you know.

I looked at the pack of alien hot dogs and wondered what is was like to be Bernie Sanders in the Senate of Hot Dogs; you know, the only Socialist, surrounded by ordinary right-wingers; some Democrats, some Republicans, and a modicum of Tea Baggers.

"Better only one Bernie Sanders," I thought, "than none, at all. At least, they have made a place for Sol Rabinowicz, who is Jewish, you know, amid all these Catholic and Protestant weenies."

As it happened, Sol wasn't there, but all my worries about what the kosher dogs might think were soon soothed. One of the guys baptized all of us with a friendly and ironclad inclusive prayer in the name of Jesus, for all of us and our weenies, including the kosher hot dogs we were about to eat, although not specifically by name, probably so as not to single us out.

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