So I go home, and my grandpa thinks he's going on cruise at Christmas, and that makes him happier than he's ever been in his entire life. But of course Grandma has to remind him that he's actually spending Christmas in Atlanta, and that makes him happier than he's ever been in his entire life.
I just sit at the table and don't say a word. I just smile at Grandpa and agree with everything he says. I don't say a word at the Thanksgiving dinner table either, and I don't say a word at the table at the bar where my friends from high school hang out.
Talking is risky, and I haven't got much to say anyway. I'd rather just listen. I hear a lot of new perspectives when I listen at home.
At home I get my cousin's perspectives: This guy listens to Rush Limbaugh and is upset that my aunt kicked him out of the house after 25 years. He says that at his new house he can't \piss off the deck or shoot squirrels in the yard unless [he's] really drunk.""
Of course, my cousin adds that his new house isn't really new, and it isn't really his. Rather, it's owned by a guy who used to live in a fish house but has now progressed to two stories and a yard in town. This guy is my cousin's best friend.
When I was 7 or 8 years old I could talk to my cousin for hours, but now I just listen. I don't want him to think I'm a communist. He already knows I'm a vegetarian, and that isn't much better.
Unlike my cousin, Grandpa doesn't know I'm a vegetarian, but like my cousin, he shoots a lot of things. He shoots cats in his garage, and they blow up. He also shoots muskrats and little animals in his yard. He doesn't worry too much about the squirrels, though.
Grandpa makes me worry and get to thinking that old men shouldn't be allowed guns, but then my uncle has more guns than my grandpa. My uncle even has loaded guns in the house that he'll use when the Taliban come.
Of course, my uncle listens to Rush Limbaugh as well, and he said if Gore would have been elected president, he would have gone to Washington, D.C., to shoot him.
My uncle doesn't think he's got too much to lose anymore, and he isn't the happiest he's ever been in his life. But of course, my uncle has Wal-Mart now, and that makes him happy.
They don't sell guns at Wal-Mart, but when I go there I notice they sell just about everything else. However, they sell nothing I want. I just want to buy some mice, and then I want to let them go in the store.
I think sabotaging Wal-Mart would get me arrested, and then I'd be looked down upon by my cousin and uncle and Grandpa and people across northern Minnesota, and that would make me a communist for sure, and maybe I'd be shot.
But I don't know. I'm not a communist, and I don't have any politics at all. I just want to be happier than I've ever been in my life, and that's not easy when I'm home.
andrewmiller@students.wisc.edu
