A Day in the Life

I got off the train and in to my dad's car, as I so often do, the afternoon of March 20th.  On our way back to my parents' house (where I am still living on a temporary basis due to the fact that the Colossal Bank of Dicks is, well, a collection of dicks and making my life miserable) we noticed that there were many, many cars parked on Forest, an otherwise nondescript street in the otherwise nondescript but picturesque suburb of Wheaton.  A Wheaton cop was parked on Stoddard in a white Ford Transit van.

My dad stopped and rolled his window down.  "What's going on down there?" he asked.

"Some Republican thing," the cop responded.

"Republicans in Wheaton?" my dad asked.  We all had a laugh, since that's like feigning shock at the idea of gambling in Casablanca.

Anyway, an hour or so later I was back on Stoddard.  The cop had moved, some dickshitter in an SUV was stopped in front of the Acura in front of me.  I realized that whatever was happening on Stoddard meant that I wasn't going to get anywhere anytime soon.

It was important that I get going, too.  I was on my way to bar trivia for the first time in a month.  This is what I do on Tuesdays now, after all.

So I pulled into a driveway, turned around, headed back to Prarie, and ultimately took a left on President, which I hate doing.  That's kind of the point of the drive down Stoddard.  It allows me to hit President at a four-way stop.

When I hit the corner of President and Harrison I looked in my rearview mirror.  A pair of cop cars were making a turn off of Forest on to President, coming my way.  A couple black SUVs were behind me.

At that point I realized that whoever the Republican on Forest was, it was someone who mattered.  It couldn't have been Congressman Peter Roskam, since he was a Wheatonite, but also running unopposed and, therefore, not likely to make a big deal of much of anything.  I was also pretty sure he didn't live on Forest.  It couldn't have been one of the local Republican gobshites, like Kirk Dillard or Brian McKillip.  They'd been showing up at train stations, buying commuters free coffee, and generally not being worth the sort of treatment that a motorcade implied.

Nope.  This had to be a muckety-muck.  My assumption was that it was the Frothy Mixture, or possibly Newt, assuming he could afford the plane fare.

Turns out that it was Mitt fucking Romney.  So I was within spitting distance of the Mittbot.  This is second only to the time that a motorcade that had to belong to either Gee Dubs or Governor Goodhair delayed my commute home while I was living in Irving on the list of times Republican assholes have made my life slightly more miserable than it otherwise had to be.

Also, too, the idea of Mittens hanging in Wheaton fascinates me.  This is Wheaton, after all.  Wheaton is an Evangelical stronghold that likes Mormons about as much as it like Muslims, atheists, and women who have sex with men to whom they are not married.  That is to say that Wheaton doesn't like Mormons too much.  But more than Wheaton doesn't like Mormons, Wheaton likes Republicans.  And Wheaton likes winners.

Which is why Barack Obama did pretty well in Wheaton back in 2008.  I don't know about Wheaton itself, but DuPage County went 55% to Obama in 2008.  Considering that DuPage is a spot of red in the sea of blue known as Chicago and the collar counties...well...

Either way, I was within two blocks of Mitt Romney for over an hour today.

That's nearly as exciting as the first time I met Roger Clyne.  Wait, who the hell am I kidding.  It's nearly as exciting as the time Kirk Dillard, local Republican gobshite for Illinois Senate, bought me coffee at the Glen Ellyn train station.

Then again, Mitt Romney has yet to give me my morning caffeine fix...

Comments

[firefall]

If Wheaton is a Republican stronghold, you can lay odds (ha) that it's full to bursting of women who have sex with men they're not married to, while being married to men they're not having sex with. It seems like a Republican signifier.