Its tax season! I'll pause while you audibly and enthusiastically rejoice in that statement................................all done? Good.
So perhaps you have seen then H&R block or some other tax company's ads. You know, the ones where the portraits of the dead presidents come of the bills and start talking even though they still look all creepily green? Well I saw it not too long ago and I was struck when one of them said to the John Everyman in the commercial, "You know what you need? A big tax refund!"
How ludicrous!
So it got me thinking about how an actual transcript of my interaction with a newly resurrected albeit hideously green Washington, Lincoln, and Jackson would go down. Enjoy.
Me: Oh hey dead founding fathers! What's up?
Washington: What's up? My dear sir, whatever does that mean?
Me: Oh sorry, speech has a way of changing over the years. How do you do?
Lincoln: Other than our alarming skin color, quite well thank you.
Jackson: What are you doing sonny?
Me: Oh this? I'm just getting together my invoices, receipts, W-2s, 1099s, and other various deductible bills together so I can go get my taxes done.
Washington: Taxes? What kind of taxes may I ask? You look too young to be engaged in enough business to be paying taxes.
Me: Oh yeah, there's a personal federal income tax now. It was the sixteenth amendment.
(Collective gasp by the green guys)
Jackson: Hogswallop! The first fruits of what a man earns certainly doesn't belong to the federal government!
Me: Well I appreciate and heartily agree with your sentiment Old Hickory, but if I don't get this done they'll haul me off to jail. There's a whole federal agency I have to please if I don't want any trouble.
Lincoln: That's absurd. Shouldn't they have to prove your guilt rather than vice versa?
Me: Once again, you're preaching to the choir Abe, but its hard taking constitutional criticisms from Mr.-only-president-to-suspend-habeus-corpus.
Washington: Well surely its not too high a percentage right? Only a small fraction surely?
Me: Well, all told, it'll probably be about 40% of everything I took in this year since I'm self-employed.
All Three: WHAT!!! (Jackson swoons....ya know, no one swoons now, but he's old enough it still works.)
Washington: Are you the richest man in America or something son?
Me: No sir, far from it, my net worth is still depressingly far into the red.
Jackson: Well what in the world is going on? What will Congress spend all this money on pray tell?
Me: Actually, all the personal income tax together basically pays the interest on our national debt.
All Three: (Groaning in anguish)
Jackson: Balderdash!
Me: Yeah, its true. But you have to borrow a whole heap of money to maintain military bases in over a hundred nations across the world and basically subsidize the defense of all of Europe through NATO.
Washington: By Jove, I believe I'm going to be ill. What on earth is this NATO?
Me: Oh, well I know your schitck was to avoid foreign entanglements, but the world's a lot smaller now. You can fly to China in less than a day. So a generation ago, all of Western Europe and America had to form a military alliance against the Soviet Union as it was threating to overtake all its neighbors.........
Washington: ......well I suppose thats not too terrible.....
Me:...........but theres not a Soviet Union anymore.
Lincoln: Oh my stars and garters! Surely your jest!
Me: I wish I was, but instead, not only is there still a NATO, but a new nation wants to join it every week. But it gets better still. You are all green because your faces are printed on Treasury Notes that we use as money although you all hated "bills of credit" as you referred to them. And none of it is backed up by any precious metal reserves. Not only is there a central federal bank now, but its in the process of nationalizing other private banks and appropriating federal funds for other failing private institutions. And if the federal bank gets your collar hot, there's also an International Monetary Fund, a World Trade Organization, an upcoming international summit on international economic cooperation, to say nothing of the United Nations itself.
Washington: (staring with his eyes wide and jaw open) I thought we founded a free country that would be different from the central-power-heavy nations of Europe?
Me: Oh yeah, and the President can almost issue his own legislation through executive orders, enforce only what laws he wants to through signing statements, and decide to go to war without congressional approval. And if you take issue against any of this stuff, you're immediately dismissed as a radical idealouge in any political disscussion.
Washington: But I was trying to found a whole country of personal-liberty-loving idealouges! (George collapses into a chair rubbing his forehead)
(Pause)
Lincoln: You know George rebelled for far less than this, right?
... or a nerd, or an egghead if you must, but I have to admit: I LOVE WORDS. Shocking news, I'm sure, being the verbal person that I am. I am very much a lover of English, books and grammar (spelling not so much :) People who, oh-so-effortlessly, work in word origins into casual conversation or act as a walking thesaurus continually amaze me while simultaneously evoking a slight sense of jealous within me; because, while I like all these things, I'm just not the master of words that I wish I was. I'm not sure where this infatuation began... I am sure part of it could be traced back to my Nana. We are the grammar freaks of the family and we share an eerily similar affinity for books and conversation (just ask Jonny).
Today is Jonny's birthday. This is one of my most favorite days of the year. In part because I love birthdays. I love the celebration and the love. I love hearing from family and doing special things for that special someone. I love remembering that the wonderful gift of life was given to the birthday boy or girl for a special reason. But really, I love today because, 27 years ago it gave me Jonny. On his birthday, I will undoubtedly think about sweet Mrs. Cammie as a pregnant mom, carrying my future husband, unbeknown to us all. I think about his family and that environment that loved and cared for little-kid-Jonny to help shape him into the man he would become. I will also think of the years we spent not knowing each other and I am baffled by that fact, but then I ambrought back to the moment and I am glad that now that I will never have to experience that again. I love this day because it's the day that God brought him here to be love.
