Why I'm Not Running for President as a Republican

 The RNC chair admonished republicans to not join the presidential fray just to promote a book.

Wait…? Is that an option? Running for office to promote a book?

Anyway, aren’t they the ones who are BANNING books? What are they doing WRITING them?

I can’t imagine what they’re even writing about.  Probably some social ideal that never was but they claim to remember.

Today, the air in my town is orange and smokey from forest fires in Canada.  It reminds me of growing up when the blast furnaces were cooking.  I never knew the sky could be blue with fluffy white clouds.  I thought it was a ruse to sell calendars.

When the EPA passed a law in 1974 to curb pollution, in a sleight of hand, the black smoke turned white. Titanium? Who knows how they finagled that. The air was still dirty no matter what color the smoke. Another ruse. 

People talk about getting those jobs back. They forget the price we paid for those jobs.

Hey, the orange air is making me nostalgic too even though I hate that. I hate visiting the cathedral of my past. Very hazy in there. I didn’t have an idealized Republican childhood with no curve balls. 

I’m thinking today of a boy I knew in home room in high school.  Something La Rue. I forget his first name.  

We had a couple boys commit suicide that year and that year was a long time ago, so forgive me La Rue for forgetting your first name.

One of the boys had long hair and was very handsome. His daddy, an executive at the steel company, was rich. He couldn’t have been crazy about his son’s long hair. The boy always had a paperback in the back pocket of his jeans. A loner. Always reading instead of playing sports, which boys like him were expected to do. He took acid and jumped off a bridge.  That was the official word.

I didn't know him, but I was sad because he was enough like me that it took my breath away. I read a lot too. 

The other boy, Someone La Rue, I saw at the swimming pool the summer between junior and senior year.  I was with my friend, Janet.  We were looking through Glamour magazines trying to find the right “look” for our yearbook pictures, which we had to get taken the next week before school started.  La Rue was sitting on a striped green towel close to us, although we didn't recognize him at first. If I thought about La Rue at all, which I didn’t, it was that he didn’t have any friends and the homeroom teacher, Mr. Butz, always seemed particularly kind to him. That day at the pool, he didn’t see us until Janet laughed loudly at something in Glamour, and he turned to see us. Then he stared straight ahead, daring someone to say something about the bright yellow 2-piece string bikini on his skinny body and bright red lipstick that clashed with his yellow mop of hair which he had obviously permed.

Janet punched me and whispered. “Hey, is that?”

I’m not a saint. I giggled. I didn’t have words for what I was looking at.

Maybe if I did, I would’ve said, “Hey, La Rue. Want some jelly beans?” or “Hey, La Rue, want to look at Glamour magazines with us?”

No words, though.

Maybe if I had had a book.