Impeachment is a word I was very familiar with as a kid. Yes, I heard adults talking about it a lot – including my parents, who had voted for Nixon but ultimately agreed he clearly was a crook – but it was also on the television seemingly all the time.
As a kid, this is not “must watch” TV.
Well, here we go again, as they say. Now it is President Trump’s turn to take a beating in Washington. I am not going to comment on my personal feelings about what he did or did not do because I have something much more important to discuss.
Specifically, things you can do instead of watching or listening to the impeachment hearings.
(On a serious note, yes, you should be informed and pay attention to the process. I also encourage everyone to be open minded, no matter your political affiliation. Our country deserves that).
But what is someone to do when most channels start to look like C-Span? Here are some suggestions.
* Thanks to Mother Nature, you can go out and salt your driveway, or do some early winterizing of your house. We don’t usually put that plastic stuff on our windows until late November. We all got caught a little flatfooted this year.
* Make some beef jerky. Now, I have never made beef jerky myself, but my dad has and I love it. So please, make some beef jerky and bring some down to the newspaper office in Oregon. I will be glad to try it and let you know how much I like it.
* Learn how to play the banjo. There are simply not enough banjo players around anymore. Frankly, there are way too many dudes running around playing acoustic guitar. What we need are some excellent banjo pickers with mullets, and fewer acoustic guitar players with man buns.
* Write a novel. Seriously. If Bill O’Reilly can become a best-selling author, pretty much anyone can. They say everyone has one great novel in them, and this just might give you the opportunity to write your “Grapes of Wrath,” or “50 Shades of Gray.” OK, maybe stick to “Grapes of Wrath.”
* Spend some quality time with your neighbors. You know Hank and Marge across the street? The people you wave to on occasion but never really talk to? Well, grab a six-pack and some leftover Halloween candy and make the trek over to their house. They would love to have a conversation with you. Then again, they might be serial killers and you are walking right into their trap. Either way, better than being bogged down in impeachment madness.
* Take down that wood paneling in your basement. It was fine when you and the other members of the “lodge” would smoke cigars there after bowling league in 1975, but now it just embarrasses the grandkids. And take down that Hamm’s beer sign while you are at it.
* Go online and get sucked into one of the conspiracy theories now floating around. There are too many to mention, but they do seem to prove that we are becoming dumber as a race.
* Finally, go out and register people to vote. Yes, there are many disaffected people who don’t vote and who probably should. Heck, all Americans who are eligible should vote and it should be easy to do it. So go out there and do your part to make sure that we don’t have to sit through another one of these national disasters 45 years from now.
