Calling Off The Dogs

WELL, IT DIDN'T QUITE work out the way I had intended (see previous article). No flaming barricades, the streets filled with the ragged but undaunted oppressed, carrying torches and banners, no excitement at the anticipation of the emergence of a new order. I had intended, in short, to instigate an uprising. I laid it all out in the previous essay.I was going to begin with a petition, invoking Jefferson. I would have dozens of my fellow senior center members sigh in - that, I knew I could accomplish; everybody really liked amy, and would plainly feel that her dismissal as kitchen manger was suspicious, questionable, if not an outright violation of the principles of human decency, as I saw it. The, of course the presenting of the grievance to the administrators, and senior centers, being something of a public and therefore government entity, are of course administered by a vast, mindless, heartless, government style bureaucracy, with not a trace of caring. Government bureaucracies are not definitely caring institutions, we might all agree in the United States of Administration. My petition was going to ask that she be given her job back, with no loss of pay for times missed due to temporary termination, and a guarantee of no further bureaucratic harassment. If that failed, my next step was going to be organizing a boycott, and then, as a last measure, a protest march around the town square (small and quaint, perfect for a mob of eighty five year olds) carrying protest sign, like "justice for Amy". And then a few hours passed, then a day, and I stated wondering how Amy was doing, how she was feeling. At our confrontation in the parking lot (that's another good story) with the administrator, she had cried. I started thinking how I would react, and I concluded that over time I would begin to feel a sense of relief, of liberation, of a burden having been removed, and that this feeling would not take long to form. I would look forward to a better future, with a better job. The, one of Amy's friends confirmed that this was exactly what was happening to her. The senior center kitchen job was receding into past, replaced with glorious visions of a better job in a market made for job seekers (near full employment). And that, dear reader, truly took the steam out of my revolutionary fervor. Why protest if the aggrieved is no longer aggrieved, but rather liberated and stress free? Gone, my eloquent invocation of the spirit of Jefferson, and the desperate circumstances which "impelled them to the separation" (his words, not mine). Yes, I had really seen this as a Jefferson struggle, because I believed, and still believe that Thomas and Amy were two peas in a pod, painted into a corner, with no escape possible. And i will always feel that way, as I slouch into elderly infirmity, and my visions of revolutionary glory fade with time, and age.