Socks

So, the granddaughter came prancing through singing and smiling to herself and lost in some sort of little-girl world. She's seven. She was wearing mismatched socks, one purple and one white. I asked her about it, and she said she'd worn them to school that way - she thought they were pretty. I asked her to let me take a picture of them, and she struck a totally unselfconscious ballet pose that they'd taught her in class yesterday...

...and then went on about her life, still singing to herself and planning how she's going to talk us into letting her go the pool tomorrow.

And she has no more idea who Osama Bin Laden is than the Man In The Moon. Less, probably, as she's a little girl and can imagine a magical man who lives on a world made of cheese easier than imagining that anyone would ever want to harm her on purpose.

Two things:

1. Bin Laden and his ilk had/have no idea the lengths I'm willing to go, the lives and treasure I'm willing to expend both personally and, to the degree I can affect it one way or the other, nationally, in order to extend and protect that innocence even one extra day. That underestimation got him and (so far) tens of thousands like him killed, and I hope put the others and their mealymouthed supporters on notice as to how dangerous we, me and mine, really are when you're coming to hurt her. I would spend my last dollar, my last breath, and my last curse, bathe them in misery, and make their entire world look like the bottom of  a Shake-N-Bake bag just for that single day.

Is that right or moral or the American Way?

I don't know. I know it's truth.

2. I so want to be there again - that place in our lives where we were safe and summer was right around the corner and where the biggest problem was how to talk the adults in our lives into letting us go to the pool for the afternoon...

In Our Next Episode: Obama's temporarily won some respect and a place in my world that doesn't consist of universal contempt. Can he maintain it?