Consider This

By LC Van Savage

Is it just moi or have you too noticed we’re surrounded by an inordinate amount of doomsayers who are constantly present in our lives regardless of how we eschew or ignore them. They’re in the papers, on the radio and of course, on the tube. Actually, I think TV is their most favorite place to doomsay. Wider audiences.

Doomsayers are those who bring down every gathering, who constantly throw big, heavy wet blankets on everyone, people who can actually ruin a manure sandwich. They’re the ones who constantly say “Oh, beware! Heads up! Be careful because if we do THIS, then THAT will happen.” And guess what folks? The THAT hardly ever happens.

I remember years ago when laws passed that businesses could keep running on Sundays. People could work on that day. For some it was a difficult problem because of their religious beliefs; Sunday for them was governed by the Law of God to be the Day of Rest. Some would work on Sundays by choice, some not, but working on Sundays for everyone became lawfully allowable.

Oh, the letters to the editors, the furious articles, the radio and TV pundits who righteously insisted, “the American family as we know it will be destroyed if parents work on Sundays. When will they have time for their children? Churches will be empty. People will spend their entire salaries and won’t have anything left over. Men and women will go to bars instead of going home. Society as we know it will be wrecked and will never be the same again. America will be another Atlantis, sinking beneath the shameful weight of working on Sundays.”

Really. Well, I know lots and lots of families and not one of them has gone asunder because a parent worked on Sunday. Nothing happened. It was fine. Everyone quickly adjusted.

Oh, and speaking of America sinking, (is that the same thing as going asunder? No, it’s not. I looked it up. “Asunder” means something goes to pieces), how about those same sex folks getting married just as if they were normal people with normal rights? Uh oh. Scary. Now that, the doomsayers shout, will really make America sink into the Atlantic and the Pacific, but maybe first splitting into lots of pieces. Dangerous, bad stuff indeed. Families ruined. The institution of marriage (why does that word always make me think of the old movie “The Snake Pit”??) will never be the same. Marriage will be a sham if same sex people marry sayeth the doomsayers, often from pulpits. And these same-sex folks adopting (or even birthing) children? Great Caesar’s Ghost! Can’t happen. Why, all of them will grow up Gay! Oh right, obviously.

Well, it’s been years since people went to work on Sundays, and more than a year since all that same sex marriage stuff began to be “allowed,” and guess what’s happened? Right. Nothing. Zippo.

Oh, and speaking of marriage, how about the doomsayers who morally doomspeak about interracial marriage? “They’ll have children and those kids won’t have any friends because they won’t belong to either race. And the parents won’t have any friends because they won’t know which color group to hang with.”

Oh and don’t forget the doomsayers who said the country would crash and burn if we could buy booze on Sundays. Well, now we can. No crashing, but personally, I think it’s vulgar that hootch is sold in our friendly neighborhood drugstores right next to the Pampers.

Of course we can’t sign legal documents, and car dealers can’t sell cars on Sundays. Gracious! If that happened, then America truly would sink quickly into the ocean, likely making a really big sucking noise.

Bad enough we have to suffer with hovering, gloomy doomsayers, but they force us to live in a world of mindless pomposity and irrational balderdash and I’d like them to just please shut up.