This really happened. Honest.
Dear Editor,
This really happened. Honest.
Oct. 13, 11:30pm I am working on my lesson plans and grading student work when a fax comes. I read it closely. It’s from the DNC with my orders. It bursts into flame after 20 seconds. After I shut off the fire alarm and get the kids back to sleep, I go to the garage and open the package that was sent a week earlier. It’s what I suspected: three cans of spray paint and black ninja clothes. I call Louise. I’ll pick her up in 30 minutes. Then I put on the clothes. I look good: a little fat for a ninja, but good. It’s 1:30am now.
On my way to Louise’s I try running without lights and almost ditch the car along Fairview. It’s safer with the lights on. Louise is ready when I get there. I ask her where she got the black face paint. She gives me some. “Who’s with us tonight,” I ask. “John and Donald,” she replies.
The DNC has sent us separate orders so that if we’re ever captured none of us can tell the whole story. “Did yours self-destruct?” I ask her. “Yes,” she replies, “how do you suppose they do that at my house, with my printer and paper?” I shrug my shoulders. “The DNC is a pretty powerful and sophisticated organization,” I say. We look warily around the car.
We get to Don’s house at 2:18am. Louise called ahead, but it looks like he fell back asleep. He’s still recovering from heart surgery and needs to rest, but orders are orders so we ring his doorbell and bang on the door. We need him. We wake up the guy across the street and have to hide in the juniper bushes for a bit. Don comes to the door, ready to roll, but a little sleepy. He looks good in ninja clothes, too. We pile in the car and proceed to John’s.
John’s wife answers the door and she’s a little taken aback with all the ninja stuff we have on. We feel pretty powerful. John joins us and we leave. We’re all getting along in years, averaging at least 65 years old, and we try to avoid talking because we’re all losing our hearing and we’d just have to yell a lot. I ask Louise where we’re going. “Gibson’s corner,” she says. I don’t know what she’s talking about so she has to tell me how to get there.
It’s 3:10am. We’re at Gibson’s corner. John and Don posted as lookouts and Louise and I do the dirty work. We’re teachers so we know how young people talk. We spray the Bush-Cheney sign and help each other with spelling. When we’re done we admire our work. “Think it’ll fool everyone?” I ask. “Some of the local Republican Central Committee members are pretty astute.” “Oh, yeah,” she says. “They’ll never know that this is part of a vast DNC conspiracy to undermine the election process.” That’s pretty interesting coming from an ex-government teacher I think to myself. I wonder about the references to Florida and Texas and whether that will give us away. Everyone knows that young people wouldn’t know any of that stuff and certainly wouldn’t have learned it in school; it just pops into their heads when they turn 30. John and Don climb into the car, red-faced. They’re pillars of the community – part of a generation that didn’t have or use that kind of language.
I get home at 5am At 5:01 another fax from DNC comes. It congratulates us. How do they know? I look warily around the house and get ready for work, dressing in the closet.
Note to Jeannie Glass: We wish we were organized well enough to coordinate with the national party simply on the mundane things, but most of the time they don’t seem to know we exist. There is no national plan to disrupt the election that I know of and to think that one exists is laughable. Second, if you took some time out to really consider who is on the Democratic Central Committee you’d see that we really are a nice, respectable group of people, many of whom go to church and do charity work. Most are retired folks and we really don’t have the energy, inclination, or character to go around spray-painting obscenities on other people’s stuff.
Ken Johnson, Hollister
