I trundle out of the grocery store with all my bags and pass a fitness club that an effective graffiti artist, with one deft slash, renamed “Fat World”. Fat world indeed. North America, anyway. We suffer from obesity and apathy. Big fat babies.
The grocery bagger boy had a poppy and I did not. Not by choice. I just didn’t happen to bump into a noticeable distributor. The controversy over poppies makes me as fecking impatient as the controversy over Christmas. People died so we could live. Jesus died sharing the concept of compassion and the Bigger Life. This turkey in my grocery bag was slaughtered so I won’t go hungry. We live off of death. So take that soy product white poppy happy holiday and shove it up a trumpet.
Here’s my red poppy. Thank you Nonno who was conscripted to fight with Mussolini. Thank you Nonna and your family for joining farms so he could come home and be an agriculturalist instead. Thank you, Grampa Jack for volunteering. Thank you Gramma for taking care of the children while he was gone. Thank you Uncle Harry, my flamboyantly gay uncle who loved white pant suits and also happened to be an accomplished pilot in WWII. You did what you did because you thought it would make a better life for me.
In this case, you were right. It did.
And that’s how I feel about that. Fat World.
