David Behling, Notes from Home

A workday morning nightmare: I had slept through my alarm and was behind schedule. But breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? Except that when I tried to pour orange juice from a new carton, the inner seal jammed in place as I was pulling on it. I finally cut out the seal with a filet knife. I opened a new box of Cheerios, but got nowhere with the plastic liner bag. Were the scissors in the drawer where they were supposed to be? Of course not. Luckily the filet knife was still handy. Then there weren’t any clean cereal bowls. Arggh!

The radio in the car came on when I started the engine, and I listened to the news as I got on U.S. Highway 69 and hit the road to Forest City, Iowa. I sighed as I listened to all the stupid people talking about simple problems, offering complicated, useless solutions. What needed to be done was so obvious, only nobody was talking about it.

“If only I were in charge,” I growled, “it would be so easy to fix that problem. So easy to fix everything.”

Then a thought struck me so hard I nearly drove into Pickerel Lake. What if I really were in charge of everything? What if I were president, or better yet, king?

Things would get taken care, if I were king. My first decree would be to make the Minnesota Department of Transportation fix this highway. Why should I drive on 12 miles of what sounds like continuous rumble strips? Did I say king? I think I’d rather be emperor.

After that, I would make the national minimum wage $30 (that’s about what it would be if the minimum wage had been raised the same percentage as Congressional salaries). Then I thought for a bit. Was that sensible? Was that fair to employers? Not that I would care about fairness when I was emperor. However, it would be cheaper and simpler to pay people in Congress the current minimum wage for whatever it is that they do.

Would I even need a congress, if I were emperor? Forget emperor, let’s say Supreme Ruler of Everything. In the Universe.

As I passed through Twin Lakes, I thought about No Child Left Behind, with its punitive approach to public education. Why not punish parents if they’re not doing what they’re supposed to? If kids don’t know their letters and numbers by the time they start school, make those parents quit their jobs and teach those kids how to read and count. And if the parents don’t want to stay home all day long? Well, whether they like it or not, they’re responsible for their children’s’ academic success. It will be one of those “because the Supreme Leader said so” moments, but I’ll tell them to think of it as “quality time” with their kids.

As I passed through Emmons and crossed the border, an RV pulled our right in front of me, causing me to hit the brakes. No more RVs, I immediately decided. Retirees should stay home; why should they get to escape winter? In fact, I decided that nobody would drive on this road without my permission — and of course it would be the first one plowed each time there was a winter storm.

Being in charge of everything would be a lot of fun.

Then the smile left my face as I thought about the idiots who would oppose me. What would I do with all of them? And what if they weren’t all idiots? What if my solutions didn’t work? Or if my answers weren’t always the right ones? What if bad things started happening, like another recession or a real pandemic? Suddenly, being in charge of everything lost most of its glamour. I don’t want to be in charge of everything, however sound I think my ideas are.

I turned onto the street that runs past the college and pulled into a parking spot, right in front of the door. Lucky me, I thought, as I grabbed my briefcase from the back seat and stood up. I looked around. All of the parking spots were available. The campus was deserted. It was a holiday, and nobody had come to work or class. Except me.

Like I said at the beginning: a workday morning nightmare.

Albert Lea resident David Rask Behling teaches at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, and lives with his wife and children in Albert Lea. His column appears every other Tuesday.