The Pursuit of Happiness

The Boss starts running around the old wreck – our house, not me – trilling “The Termite Guy is coming!” That’s my cue to open up our various crawl spaces, and be available as needed. I have never been needed.

The Termite Guy – Anthony, from Attack! Termite and Pest Control – comes once a year, and has for the last fifteen years or so. He wears comfortable coveralls and carries a couple of holocaust tanks on his back, and nods amiably as the Boss energetically superintends his strategic engagement of the problem at hand. She gets away with it because she’s beautiful, and because she’s earnestly convincing that the world will stop spinning unless she supervises it. Every once in a while Anthony glances in my direction – still nodding – to see if he’s getting the important points of the Boss’s multi-part messaging. I nod back to let him know that he’s doing fine.

It occurs to me that the annual exercise of our termite policy is not unlike voting. In between inspections – elections – we examine the operation of our various civic households. If we discover bad bugs instead of good bugs, we expect Anthony – voters – to rid them from the house. Only 12% of Americans approve of the job Congress – bad bugs – is doing, so maybe Anthony will sic one of his holocaust tanks on them. He hasn’t so far – he keeps letting the same vermin back into the same elected offices (85% will be re-elected) – but it’s possible things will be different this year.

But probably not. Our focus is on whether the Big Insane Rat or the Little Rat gets to live in our National House – it’s a one rat house – and we haven’t paid much attention to the legislator-rats who spend all their time worrying about what goes on in our pants. That crotch-high perspective would ordinarily bode well for conservative voters – and their elected vermin – but the Big Insane Rat can’t Mariachi, or be reliably depended on to Make Our Toilets Great Again. So they’re worried. Conversely, the Little Rat will make things incrementally better, or incrementally worse, but that falls short of what’s needed to end a nation-wide infestation. That’s worrisome, too.

I guess we should start praying that Anthony does a better job.