I have a little sailboat.
It’s not much – it’s one of these. Smaller than a car. You don’t get “in” it, you get “on” it.
It’s my only expensive indulgence. I don’t get to use it much – and right now it’s missing a piece that’s out of manufacture. My wife wants me to sell it. When I first got it, I could legally park it on my condo association’s property, but some time later the condo board people got a petition up to make where we live a no-boat zone. I went to the meetings and spoke out – the only boat owner to do so – and although the condo board president said other (larger) boats were the problem, and admired my calm, rational response, the restriction passed anyway. So I was forced to move the boat. For some years, it rested on the property of relatives, but now that one of them has cancer (in remission), she’s cleaning out her life and wants to simplify. That’s certainly her right, so I’ve brought the boat back.
It has to be somewhere. I can’t afford marina fees – the boat was only economically possible in the first place because I could park it in the unused distant visitor lot at our place. I’m cranky that conditions changed on us after we spent the money, but there’s nothing I can do about that. There’s a boat lot in the area that charges around $2000 per year – if someone dies and a spot opens up, that is.
It is legal to park the boat on a public street (once I’m outside the no-boat zone). But I’m required to move it regularly. So my boat has become an itinerant fugitive; I move my little yellow trailer-sailer every week or so.
I just want to keep it, okay? Is that too much to ask? Everyone else gets to have stuff. There are big fancy trucks, SUVs, a camper, personal watercraft, Mercedes and Lexus indulgences, and bicycles parked all over the neighborhood. My litle boat is too short to block anyone’s vision, no paint is peeling, and it doesn’t convey any offensive message.
Until now.
Parked down the stret near the golf course this week, where there are no houses to resent its presence, my little yellow boat acquired a TERRORISTS FOR OBAMA bumper sticker smacked right across the stern. Nice and sticky; a PITA to remove.
The poor El Salvadoran immigrants at the bus stop in front of the low-income apartments didn’t vandalize my boat. The shool kids at other bus stops didn’t, although they did play with the winch a bit. The Whole-Foods-shopping liberal grandmother didn’t.
But the golf-course-infesting Young Republicans thought it was a blast to slap hate speech on my little piece of exposed property and sneak away laughing.
Well, fuck you, boys!
Somebody in this story damaged an American’s property to make a political point, and it wasn’t Obama, Earth First, PETA, or Al Qaeda – it was YOU. Aren’t you guys always talking about property rights and insisting on respect being shown?
The police declined to look into the local Unitarian Church’s marriage-equality sign being burned down…twice… but let somebody’s Hummer get vandalized and the FBI investigates eco-terrorism. Justice for rich people only is just hunky-dory, eh boys?
But it’s okay, boys. Cold and windy as it was, I got most of the sticker off tonight before darkness fell; at least it’s unreadable. As for whether it’s funny or not – as to who’s laughing last –
you can tell me when you see me at the polls, November 4th.
