Texting is not my thing. It’s convenient for notifying one’s lunch partner that one has been seated at a table out of sight of the entrance to the restaurant, or asking busy friends to call when they have a few minutes to chat. Sending, receiving, and checking for texts isn’t something I do on a daily basis, particularly when I am in town and committed to rereading the better part of Edith Wharton.
After a few days of not checking earlier this week, I powered up my phone (yeah, I don’t do that every day either) to find a plethora of emails from what appeared to be every candidate on the Texas primary ballot. Not from the actual candidate, mind you, but whoever it is that is charged with sending such nuisances.
As I proceeded to delete them all, one stood out. It said, “LONNIE, this is TX Republican Voter Engagement PAC reminding you that you need to get registered to vote…” Well, I found that rather strange, as it is only natural that Daddy isn’t registered at my current address, or anywhere else I would hope, as he’s been dead for nearly 40 years.
Daddy is sent mail to our address occasionally, which I chalk up to the fact that Mother lived here for the last eight years of life. How a Republican voter database got created to include Daddy when he had been laid to rest peacefully by the duck pond for years before there was an Excel spreadsheet, much less a database with technology to support it, is beyond me.
On top of that, how did my little used cell phone number get sucked into it?
I got quite a little chuckle out of this, seeing how I’ve always been told that dead Democrats are the ones who somehow make it to the polls. I seem to remember Daddy saying something along those lines years ago when discussing the Democratic Primary runoff election for U. S. Senate in 1948 between Lyndon Johnson and Coke Stevenson.
It was a bit heartwarming to think Daddy might get a laugh out of this, too, once I explained texts, cell phones and databases to him. I wouldn’t have to explain to him about political shenanigans, as they have been around for a much longer time.
While I sometimes forget my cell phone number, I can remember almost every crush I’ve ever had. Crushes frequently have nothing to do with sexual attraction or gender, and I’ve had them on all types and ages.
There was a little girl in my second grade class who had a budding artistic talent for drawing with crayons when the rest of us were still struggling to color within the lines. There was the crush on first one, then another, of the Monkees, displaying a fickleness that would show up in my single years. From the window of my Geometry class, I could dreamily watch the object of my main high school crush play baseball.
Various Hollywood stars would come and go, and even today, I have crushes that many might find unusual. Chuck Rosenberg and Jill Wine-Banks are two. But here lately, I’ve added a new one, and he seems most unlikely.
The subject of my newest crush isn’t tall, and he isn’t particularly handsome. There is something of the boy about him, although that is beginning to fade. But still, I stop whatever I’m doing when a clip of him is aired on television.
He is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine. As head of state, he is leading the Ukrainian people in their effort to resist the Russian invasion. A gym body or a pretty face is no competition for the strength and courage he displays. His famous response of “I need ammunition, not a ride” to an offer from the U. S. was brave and genius.
Zelenskyy stands on the world stage with Biden and Putin as well as others whose experience and education prepare them better for this critical moment. Yet he is towering above them in the eyes of most of the world. That is crush material in my book.
If there is any such thing as a group crush, I’ve got my first one of those on the Ukrainian resistance. News reports of ordinary people—school teachers and bookkeepers, bus drivers and grandmothers—standing up to the Russian army, making Molotov cocktails and taking possession of thousands of submachine guns are showing the world in real time what defending freedom really looks like.
That heroic display makes American assertions that a fight for liberty can be found in wrangling about vaccinations and the wearing of masks look puny, protected and privileged by comparison.
