Do What Now?
I had an apparent crisis the other day.
Seems the missus and myself were to attend a showing of the arts in downtown Kansas City. At my wife’s command, I rose off of the couch and began both mentally and physically preparing the event about one or two hours prior to the event’s start.
I do not know what to expect tonight, I know only that I am to behave and dress appropriately. In order to achieve this goal best I must completely shut down and surrender my free will to my wife. Luckily, I had been broken years ago.
Throughout the night, she will go on to tell me where my shoes are, where my keys are and after a few minutes of driving aimlessly toward Interstate 35, I will start to wonder where I’m actually driving to and ask her about that, too. She will tell me, and offer directions. Later, she will tell me where I am sitting and explain just what it is, exactly, that I am watching.
But first, she must tell me what to wear. That’s because I am standing at the top of my staircase in boxers and a T-shirt, yelling for her to tell me how to dress myself.
Desperate for her guidance, I lose patience, twitching about at the top of the stairs, awaiting her decision with baited breath. Her pause and the uncertainty of the situation bring me anxiety. I mean, if she doesn’t tell me what to wear, I may not even go! Finally, her verdict is in.
“Put on a pair of khakis and one of your Polo shirts.”
There is a comfort in knowing. I nod and head back to my closet. I open the door and realize that the only clothes I own are khakis and Polo shirts. And that’s when it hits me: In essence, my wife told me to put on pants and a shirt. And without her guidance in this matter, I was seriously floundering about, unable to fathom a solution of my own.
Has it already come to this?
Actually, it’s probably just come full circle. For the first part of my life, my mother dressed me. Then I dressed myself – careful only to wear nothing but colors of blue and shades of black, gray and white. Clearly, in my final decades, I will become like most fathers and grandfathers across America, exclusively wearing the clothes given to me as presents by family members. All of my clothes will be “nice,” and I will be required to wear the gifted pieces of clothing whenever I am visiting with them.
Again, all of this will prove to be too difficult a task for me, and I will forever be looking to my beloved wife for guidance in the matter.
You know, I could spin these heartwarming tales of domesticity every week if I wanted to. We just rescued a kitten from a local shelter, and I have reams of cat stories for you all. Would you believe they really do like to play with balls of string? And boy, do they like to scratch things!
But let’s be honest about our relationship. This is not what we want from one another. You don’t care about my cat. Luminary readers want to read about Parkville issues, and The Luminary promised to shed light.
Believe me; we don’t have to do it. It would be so much easier to just sit back and write front-page features about blankets and cinnamon sticks. But we just can’t do it. There are plenty of other newspapers from major metropolitan areas that have the deep pockets to hire legions of journalists for the puppy dog beat, the ice cream beat and the ripoff-the-independently-owned-small-weekly-newspapers beat.
To that end, we will always vigilantly report issues concerning the public’s interest.
We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end of deadlines. We shall report on the downtown, we shall report on the Missouri River and Riss Lake, we shall report with growing confidence and growing strength on matters of the county and state, we shall defend Parkville’s interests, whatever the cost may be. We shall report on the politics, we shall report on the school grounds, we shall report in the fields and in the streets; we shall never be suppressed.