Follow-up on my Christmasday epiphany

In follow-up to my yesterday's blog, "My missing grip on reality", wherein I made public my self-diagnosis of insanity, I offer the subsequent anecdote.

After a fine breakfast of fried eggs, veggie bacon with a couple slices of sourdough toast, I went outside to wash the car before it got too hot. I was still shaken at my realization I had lost touch with reality as it exists in 2005--this New American Century.

But if I had any doubts as to my claim on insanity, they were soon to be erased by my neighbors.

Any of you familiar with the program, "King of the Hill" which probably most of you aren't, then you may recognize my neighbors. It only took a couple of minutes out on the driveway before "Dale Gribble" and "Boomhauer" showed up.

There's just something about me being out in the front yard in the morning that draws these two out. Now, in "King of the Hill," Gribble is a professional exterminator that has his own secret insecticide recipe that smells suspiciously like it's mostly gasoline. Okay, it's all gasoline. I compare my neighbor to Gribble because, as a retired Air Force officer, he made his living flying in B-52's and his solution to most diplomatic problems is, "Just bomb the shit outta 'em."

Gribble's extermination business is pretty much a dismal failure, much like my neighbor's foreign policy ideas for solving international differences.

As for my other neighbor, "Boomhauer", his speech gets slurred and increasingly more incomprehensibile--much like his logic--the more excited he becomes. (Keep in mind, that's just my take but I'm crazy, okay?)

Well, I think the big attraction for Gribble and Boomhauer is, they consider me some kind of anomaly. Innocuous enough, but a tad grumpy at times, they find me amusing. I suspect they think of me as harmlessly whacko (mostly because I don't own a gun).

So yesterday morn, the usual small talk was going along fine until, looking over the roof of the car I was bathing with a warm wet rag I said, "You know, I blogged this morning and concluded I'm totally insane." I explained why. Gribble grinned in his usual amusement whenever I question Bush or the path *his president* has taken us down.

Expressing my frothing mouth reaction to America's sanctimonious concern for Iraqi prisoners being tortured if turned over to Iraqi authorities, Boomhauer said something like, "Dang, 's been thata way, y'know, all that killin fer thousands a years an' I tell ya what, that gol-durned Saddam done the same dad-burned thang. All goes back ta that dad-gummed Veetnam thang and that wha's his feller's name, Lutenent Kelley, Collie in that dang ol' Me Lie thang, and his lettin 'em take dem dang 'ol pichers."

Gribble smiled and muttered some reassurance I shouldn't take things so seriously. But they'd finally got what they both came for. My rant of the day. Sated, they drifted away. Maybe because on an occasion or two, they'd seen me go really over the edge, and they didn't want to stick around for that possibility.

Their amusement rests in leading me to the edge, but not pushing me over. After all, they've seen what a scary place that can be for a crazy person feeling cornered by the strange *rationality* of his fellow Americans.