by barbara sirrot

Created on: May 30, 2008

My husband may be a fraud. He is a registered Democrat but sometimes I wonder about his loyalty. He does things that just do not fit the image of a liberal. He would like to save his napkin from lunch to use at dinner. I will see him check it for dinner worthiness before he tosses it in the dirty linen. A clue to his political leanings you think? He resists the temptation to leave the garbage in the living room because it was not ergonomically correct to walk all that way to the garage with just one item in his hands. Ideologically speaking could he possibly telling me something?

I find that he will not go to the grocery unless we have at least five items to buy and need to stop at the bank, pharmacy and the doctor's office. We have at one time or another wandered all over town, taking all day to use coupons and save $3.50. Going to the doctor with just one ailment is probably not fiscally sound and even though the insurance company does not care, he thinks it is wasteful. Any Republican knows that the reason medication and gas costs so much it because people are wasting it on sickness and working. What are the American people thinking my husband would say.

He was reusing, recycling and reducing before Al Gore was a grown up. We save plastic bags and scraps of lumber in case we need them. I have gone though the tool chest and found it was like going on a archaeological dig. Treasures were hidden in it. We have the pulls from the original cabinets in my parent's house. He says we may need them someday.

Money is to be saved. Children are to be seen and not heard. Getting old will probably break the treasury unless it happens to us then it is perfectly all right. I have tried to give money away to the poor animals of the world but he pointed out that charities are for wimps. Poor anything is not his fault so therefore it is not his responsibility.

I am not sure how he votes. He seals his envelope and will, in this particular care, make a special trip to the courthouse to drop his ballot in the box. Did I mention that we have mail in ballots in Oregon and the post office is a two blocks walk. He is suspicious of mail carriers so a ballot must be delivered. His thinking is that we have always done it that way and we just saved a stamp.

I have suspected that he is a closet Republican for a lot of years. He never tells me how he feels about a subject and if he is what I suspect he is, I don't what to hear it. I am a democrat and there is not the closet that can hold me.

On the other hand he could just be, well, strange. In that case I have nothing more to say. Living with him for 47 years has left me a little warped. But then I am a Democrat. Warped is what I am all about!

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