THE SONIC BOOMER
I have a prediction, and it is that this year’s holiday season is going to be big. People are so happy that the election is over that they are going to throw themselves into shopping, cooking and decorating. They are going to shower their families with gifts and food and love, just to show how appreciative they are that no one close to them was running for office.
There is also a lot of fence-mending to be done among friends who, before they discovered their blueness or redness, were really happy to be with one another. Gifts and food and love go a long way in the healing process.
I also predict that the holiday season’s special events will be well-attended. After months of being glued to our television sets, biting our nails to the quick because we were so worried about the fate of our country, we want to get out of the house. We will attend movies set in England (“Oh, why did we ever leave?”), watch nutcrackers come to life as ballet dancers and stand in long lines to see Santa Claus.
Halloween was huge. For the first time ever, I went out to that huge trunk-or-treat event they hold out in The Acreage. There had to be 10,000 people there over the course of the evening. Everybody’s trunk was running out of candy. People were sending their kids down the line to trick-or-treat just so they could replenish their supply. Was it re-gifting? Recycling? Child labor? Beats me.
I predict Thanksgiving will be its typical family crisis. Smart people will post little “It’s Over” signs at the front door and refuse to allow any more political discussion. They will do this for the sake of the children. These kids haven’t heard a sentence without “Trump” or “Clinton” in it for months, maybe a year. While their parents sat in front of the TV, they had to learn to amuse themselves — quickly progressing from toys and games to crocheting quilts, wallpapering their bedrooms and mastering the art of French cooking. If mom’s turkey turns out dry, no problem — little Johnny built a smoker from tin cans he found in the neighbor’s trash, and his pheasant under glass is just delicious.
Come Christmas, I predict that the churches will be full. Half the people will be thanking God their candidate won, the other half will be praying that the country can survive its new president. Thankfully, the children — always the most reasonable among us — will simply be glad to be alive. They wait all year for this day filled with joys, toys and people who dote on them. Nothing can distract them from their infectious glee.
Then, at last, New Year’s Eve — an evening of celebration culminating in a fresh, clean slate. Time to look forward, not back. Time to resolve to be better than we’ve been before, to think bigger and do better, to make 2017 a red letter year in our personal history books.
Those are my post-election predictions, based on an unimpeachable source, namely, how I personally feel right now. And I personally am over it. In fact, I’m already in pumpkin pie mode. And it feels so good.
