Our Latest Survey Reveals

Mrs. Lumly in 204 sneezed, cursed the president, then went to bed

and read a mystery novel about a series of brutal mutilations in

the village of Wystan Grove, just south of London. While bathing,

Mr. Halloran in 421 ran out of shampoo, cursed the president,

then dried himself carefully before eating the bowl of ice cream

he’d promised himself he’d forgo tonight because he’d been

putting on a few pounds. After supper with his fiancé, Ray Borger

in 118 came home feeling depressed for a reason he couldn’t put

his finger on but thought it had something to do with a joke he’d

read but didn’t get. When he told Naomi about it she was incredulous,

suggesting it was a joke any ten-year-old could understand, so they

argued over what the joke meant—they both cursed the president

before leaving each other at 10:27 without a good night kiss.

At 4 a.m. Betty Wayfield in 506 heard a noise in the hall and tried

unsuccessfully to wake her husband. She cursed the president,

then went back to sleep, only to be reawakened by a noise

in the living room. She was again unable to rouse her husband,

so she got out of bed, locked herself in the bathroom where she

cursed the president, the vice-president and the secretary of defense.

After an hour of sitting on the toilet her legs went to sleep and she

still hadn’t heard any sounds indicating that when she went back

to bed she’d find the murdered body of her husband there, so she

cursed her father, the president, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Bobby

Fellows, who’d stood her up on the night of her senior prom.

 

The sun was finally coming up after a long unsettling night in the city.

Mrs. Burnside in 301 fed her cat and read the newspaper with her first cup

of coffee. The world was in a bad way, just as it had been yesterday. But she

was a woman of sanguine temperament. She sang in the shower, put on a

a new dress that went splendidly with her favorite pair of shoes, then

locked herself out of her apartment. She stood at her door a moment

thinking about the many stupid things she’d done in her life, but perhaps

none as stupid as this, locking herself out of her own home. She’d learned,

however, through years of therapy to forgive herself for big and small things

alike, to take life’s setbacks in stride and to be thankful for everything

that went right. But she could not forgive the president, so she cursed him

on the way to work, throughout the day and all the way home that evening.

She cursed him for his lies, for his giveaways to the rich, for his indifference

to the poor, for his general lack of curiosity, for his destruction of the middle

class, for his strutting, jingoistic patriotism, for the cronyism that cost lives,

for his violation of laws and indifference to Constitutional principle, for using

bigotry as a political tool and most of all for the deaths of every person in a war

that was neither just nor necessary. She slept well that night and awoke

the next morning feeling restored. But she never stopped cursing the president.

 

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