September 3, 1999

That's it; now I'm really mad.

And this time it's not about politics.

No, honestly, I'll take all the rhetoric and litigation the opposing sides of Measure I can sling at each other from now until November.

I mean it.

They can tie me to a chair for hours on end, making me listen to their Inane, Imbecilic Measure I arguments over who cares more about the community and it wouldn't cause me the slightest irritation. Bring it on.

Or how about the schools? If parents never ask, "Why not?" and vote for school vouchers to allow educational choice, it won't make me crazy.

I could take lifetime terms of Delaine Eastin and Richard Riley mouthing platitudes about how yet still more money and new programs will be just the ticket to getting our high school graduates reading at the fifth-grade level. No problem.

As for the spiraling costs of government, you could raise my taxes until every last publicly paid administrator in Fairfield moves into Rancho Solano with nothing less than a BMW in each of their three-car garages and I will not crack.

And guns - yes, go ahead and filibuster me about how we could get all the Saturday night specials off the streets if only we would pass THE magical law, even though any motivated prisoner can make or get a cheap gun while in the pen under constant watch. I'll take it without a whimper.

I could handle all those gruesome scenarios before I could again stand to see what I witnessed at Westfield Shopping Town Solano on Tuesday, Aug. 31.

For sale in a department store was an electronic Santa gettin' down to a rock 'n' roll Christmas tune.

Employees had gathered around and were greatly amused by the abomination.

My only solace was the thought of how incredibly deep their loathing of the contraption will be by Christmas Eve.

September was the earliest I'd ever seen a Christmas retail display before Tuesday's unfortunate encounter and I had believed that certainly we would never live to see the day that August would be breached. Of course now it has.

But the most horrifying aspect of all is the possibility that retail marketers are working on making that old holiday sentiment come true about every day being Christmas day.

Let me be the first to offer a desperate Bah Humbug!

© 1999 Cynthia Hahn