Changing my mind

I will use a preface to help explain my list.

I am almost 70, dead broke, and if social security goes then I might find I am not too proud to eat from a garbage can. I can survive.
Up till a few years ago I was a yellow dog democrat, My dad was one and an organizer for a Union.

I remember shot rattleing on the floor along with broken window glass, I hid under the bed as some company men shot out our windows.
My baby sister, now 65, still has a scar on her cheek to remind her of that night. A strong point was made, but one must place this event in the proper context of time. That was 1947. In 2000 I took a temporary job as a warehousman in a right to belong to a union state.

You must belong or the fury comes down on you. A smart ass said "Sign this now," and shoved a clipboard with a sign up sheet to join the Union into my face. "I might be more inclined to sign if I were asked nicely, and it was explained to me what it is I am being asked to sign!" I was firm in stating what i wanted. Respect!

"Smart ASS! Republican!" Up to that point I voted democrat without any more thought than signing that document.

An hour later I was laying in a hospital with a punctured lung. You see I was up on a high ladder checking a list of stock numbers when
the Union steward whipped around the corner of the stack I was working on, snagged my ladder and threw me 30 feet down and fifty
feet in the direction the fork was moving. I am lucky to be able to be alive enough to utilize this experience to help me change my mind.

Some changes come harder and more painfully than others.

1. I wish I had been open enough to see what was really happening without wasting so much time.

2. I wish I had considered the real value of money in terms of things like, keeping warm this winter, keeping enough food to keep my grandchildren fed. Grandma is still good at darning holes in mittens and sox, but there is no way to darn up the holes the teachers are leaving in their education. Things like Civics, History, and Philosophy leave holes like pulled teeth from the the jaw of education.

3. I wish I had taken a stand a long time ago, insisting that an elected servent of the people, must serve the people and not themselves. Public Service is just a service, like 2 years in the army, It is over and you can't be reelected, And you must obey oll the laws you make. You can not vote yourself a raise.

Note a wise scholar once said the last official act of a failing government is to raid the treasury!

D Moarzjasac

A 500 word entry