My home town is having a special election on Tuesday. Tonight at precisely 6:11pm, my phone rang:

Me: Hello?

Telemarketer Lady: Hi, I’m with the Republican party, and I’m calling about Measure E.

Me: (politely) Oh, I’m sorry, I’m not a Republican —

Telemarketer Lady: (click)

In retrospect, maybe I should have said, “Oh, how interesting,” and pretended to be a Republican for as long as I could, thus tying up valuable Republican party resources just before a critical school bond referendum. Unfortunately my Mama and Papa didn’t school me in the brutal Darwinian tactics of street-level political combat. Instead, they schooled me in answering the phone politely.

Perhaps this is the essence of our problem.

And on another front, M’ris is waging psychological warfare. I make an innocent reference to “Fiddler”, which has the unfortunate side effect of embedding a few of Fiddler’s songs and catchphrases in her head. So M’ris retaliates by trying to make me associate Trinity with Christopher Walken. Yuck! Again, see? Underhanded, vicious street-level combat, for which I am totally unprepared. So the question is, does this deserve a response? On the one hand… an eye-for-an-eye leaves the whole world blind. On the other hand… it’s just this kind of namby-pamby thinking that lets Republican Telemarketer Ladies just, like, walk all over people. But on the other hand… no. No! There is no other hand!