Opportunity (Almost) Knocks

Finally, it looked like an opportunity presenting!

I was home a bit early after picking up Little One at the library, enjoying the hour between the day and night jobs. Sometimes I shower, sometimes I make dinner for myself and the girls, sometimes I just bop around the house wasting time, like this day, plucking my guitar as my oldest is logging on to the laptop to do homework. In the waning hours of daylight, I casually glance out the window and spot him.

The opportunity!

Across the street is a grungy hipster, clipboard in hand, knocking on my neighbor's door.

My neighbor, a plumber in the process of flipping the house, doesn’t have time to listen to the grungy hipster’s spiel. Dejected, the grungy hipster secures his clipboard and heads down to the next house.

Now I’m excited. Remember this list, these twelve questions I sent out into the aether seeking liberal answers? My quest to understand the liberal mind? Now I’ll have the opportunity.

I explain my plan to twelve-year-old Little One, who looks back at me as if I am either the weirdest thing she has ever encountered or a typical dad ready to willfully embarrass his offspring. All I want is for her to keep an eye out the window for my progressive friend while I go find the iPad, get to the Hopper blog, and pull up the twelve questions.

I imagined what would go down as he rang the doorbell and I answered. “Hi,” he’d say, and before I could get in a word edgewise, he’d say something like, “I’d like to discuss how Donald Trump is destroying the very fabric of civilization” or “Did you know that Planned Parenthood – and women’s reproductive health – is under attack?” or “Would you like to help stamp out LGBT discrimination?” or “Can I get your signature to help raise the minimum wage to $18 an hour?”

Then, I’d hold up a finger and say, “Sure. But first, I’d like to ask you a question or two.”

Actually, twelve. These ones, here.

But, alas, ’twas not to be. Hipster headed down the block towards the busy highway, yet he never crossed the street and returned back up past my house. I waited anxiously, scanning the sidewalk from the living room window, but didn’t see him. Maybe he got detained at a house down the street and I had to abandon my quest to get ready to go to work part two. Or, possibly, as Little One offered, the dude spotted me on lookout, got creeped out, and hightailed it out of the neighborhood.

Oh well. The twelve questions for a progressive remain, at this posting, unanswered…