I tried watching the news regarding the Michael Cohen hearings and President Donald Trump’s visit in Vietnam with North Korean Head Squirrel Kim Jong Un.
I reached my saturation point within 90 seconds. Not only did I not know what the hell was going on, I also didn’t care. I turned off the TV and went out to the garage to sharpen knives.
Such political immaturity comes easy to me. I try not to waste time fretting over stuff I can’t do anything about — stuff like church, the weather, what my wife thinks and celebrity relationships.
Dwight David Eisenhower was president the year I was born. I didn’t care, of course. I was a baby and busy the next few years resisting all efforts to toilet train me.
As I got older, I routinely confused him with another president. A good example is my baptismal interview with the branch president when I was 8. He asked me who was the president of our church.
Me • “Eisenhower.”
Him • “No, Bobby. The president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is David O. McKay.”
I didn’t argue the point. My second choice had been Roy Rogers. Boy, that would have been embarrassing.
My interest in presidential politics sharpened during John F. Kennedy’s term, specifically in November 1963, when he was assassinated. It suddenly occurred to me that if a president could be murdered, what chance did a fifth-grader have?
Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded Kennedy. I didn’t pay much attention to him, save for the constant news that he was bombing the hell out of someplace.
I was in high school when along came President Richard M. Nixon. My interest in him extended only to the point that he might require me to participate in the aforesaid bombing, especially the part where it might get me killed.
When Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974, I didn’t hear about it for more than a week. I was in Uruguay, specifically a part where there weren’t many televisions.
According to my journal, the big news for me that day was a transfer from Labios de Rata to Tres Chanchos, where I got dysentery.
I came home to President Gerald Ford. I don’t recall what he did for America other than fall down a lot. At least that’s what the news reported.
His immediate successor, Jimmy Carter, was a peanut farmer who gave away the Panama Canal. I like peanuts OK, but I’ve never been through the Panama Canal and have no plans to do so in the future. So that was fine with me — not that anyone bothered to ask.
Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush got us involved in shootouts in Grenada and Panama, both of which I think we won.
Then along came the Clintons (yes, Bill and Hillary, even though only one was actually sworn in as president), another Bush, our first black president, followed by an orange one. I wearied of hearing about all of them within the first week of their terms.
Accusations that my detachment from the forces that control our country’s future are naive — if not irresponsible — typically come from those who spend an enormous amount of time and energy raging about things they can’t change. It seems a huge waste of energy.
I vote every election, mostly for the candidate who annoys me the least. If I can’t find one of those, I write in a neighbor. If she or he were to win, which seems unlikely, then I would at least have a chance of making my voice heard.
Presidential secretary • “Ma’am, there’s a Robert Kirby on Line 2 for you. He wants to know if he can go into your Herriman residence to get a bowling ball?”
Madam president • “Tell him yes, and then hang up on him. And put him back on the Secret Service shoot-on-sight list.”
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
