Ticking

Tonight my son came in to the dinner table with something in his hand. It was the "Bush's Last Day" keychain that I received oh-so-many-days ago. Hundreds of days ago. Now, he said with glee, "We're down to two digits!"
Very true. We are down to just ninety-six days of the Pinhead Regime. I noticed this myself just a few days ago when the counter ticked down below one hundred. It gave me pause. It made me think of the last mile of a marathon. It made me think of the last week of school before summer vacation. It made me think of the night before Christmas.
But what if it was the night before Christmas, and then Christmas never came? What if you had run twenty-five miles, and then some joker jumped out in front of you and told you that you would have to run another twenty-five. What if you were cleaning out your desk and found a letter that told you that you had to come back for summer school?
I don't want another four years of war and trickle-down economics. I don't want the war in Iraq to linger for another month, let alone another decade. I don't want to have to explain our country's energy policy with the words, "Drill Baby, Drill." I don't want to have to sell my house to pay for my son to go to college, or to have his wisdom teeth out. I don't want to have to reset the clock.