A Little Tale of Name-Dropping

“Mr. President, I’m honored to meet with you again.”

That was as far as I got. Right up to that point, everything was golden. In the next breath, my career at the White House was cut down before its prime.

The first meeting, two months earlier, had actually just been an ice-breaker for the topic itself—the ”Forest Farming” bill. The President had been a member of the Arbor Day Foundation for decades, and we weren’t sure he would understand the basic goal of culling and curating our largest natural resource.

We sat around the long table, all of us surprised that the president himself was attending. Then we began condescending to the Commander-in-Chief. “You see, Mr. President, what we’re actually trying to do—”

“—is make our forests healthier and safer, act as stewards for the lungs of our country, and stop behaving like a greedy cross between beavers and termites. That pretty much got it?”

We stared at him, completely at a loss.

“It’s not rocket science, gentlemen, it’s exactly what you named it: farming.” And he left.

Legislation that was ten years late in coming was finally being born, and I was its midwife. I beamed at the President; he looked back at me skeptically. “Well? Have you worked on the bill?”

“Yes, sir. The bill has been fleshed out, and it has the potential to be the environmental keystone to your administration's own Arch de Triumph. ‘This Forest Protected by President…President…’”

Adrenaline is apparently an amnesiac.

He looked at me his trademark raised eyebrow. “A little less coffee next time, eh? We’ll take another look at this after Interior scribbles all over it.”

He looked me in the eye, raised his brow a little more and said: “Good work…uh…hmm…well isn’t that funny: I forgot your name.”

(298 words)