Our Long National Nightmare (a Talking with Bob interlude)

I was checking my e-mail and happily making plans for the millions of dollars that was coming my way from all of the sweepstakes that I had won without remembering when I had actually entered them and from all of the inheritances I apparently had coming from people I didn’t know all over the world. Images of my new luxurious life were dancing in my fevered head as each wonderful e-mail scrolled across the screen.

My friend Bob was on the other side of the room grumbling and cursing as he perused the day’s newspaper. Bob had a fluorescent marker at the ready as he carefully searched for factual, spelling, and grammatical errors. “Aha!” he exclaimed every time he found such an error, gleefully highlighting each one with a ragged yellow circle. Bob said “aha!” a lot every time he read the paper.

When he was done Bob, the undisputed master of the scathing letter to the editor, would turn his outrage and disgust into missives of poetic invective and withering, carefully-crafted vitriol and send them sailing into the ether and on to the screens of the poor interns tasked with sorting through such communications. Bob was something of a legend among said interns.

A breaking news alert caught my eye and I scanned it; the news sent waves of relief coursing through my very being. “At last,” I said aloud, “our long national nightmare is over!”

Bob’s eyebrow shot up and he looked over expectantly. “What? What is it? Is the war over?”

“War? No, Bob, not the war,” I replied as patiently as I could (Bob had strange priorities sometimes.) “The unjust incarceration of our queen is over, man. Paris is free!”

Bob’s eyes grew shaded. “Paris Hilton? You think our national nightmare was Paris Hilton being in jail?”

Ignoring the skepticism in Bob’s voice, I nodded. “Well yeah…it had to be hell for that sweet girl. No makeup, no cell phones, no photo ops…I hope she’s not permanently scarred because we need her so much.” I paused and sighed heavily. “C'mon, dude, even you have to admit that it’s been so very hard on all of us.”

My friend Bob glared at me silently for a long moment and then he shook his head. “You say these things just to hurt me, don’t you?”

“I too am America, Bob,” I said with an impish grin.

“Yes,” Bob agreed glumly, “unfortunately you are.”

“Hey,” I said reading from the news, “Barbara Walters said that Paris has found Jesus…or Buddha…or something…she’s a new, enlightened Paris following in the footsteps of Jesus, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Oliver North, and, I'm sure, Scooter Libby and turning her oppression into something that will enlighten us all!”

Bob rolled his eyes in righteous disgust and turned back to the paper. “I’m not listening to you anymore, Michael.”

“Ooo, she's going to tell all to our pal Larry King! This is gonna be so hot!” I gushed as Bob resumed his hunt for errors to bring to the attention of the newspaper’s interns.