It was fun while it lasted

I had a Roseanne Roseannadanna moment last night.

I heard Chris Christie, in his keynote speech, say, or state, actually, "Our seniors aren't selfish!"

Naturally I had to blog.

Hey, Chris Christie, you trembling temple of tedium, I want you and me to meet in gym shorts on a beach to give me the opportunity of beating you bloody for what you said about me last night. My body weight would not displace the mass of your right thigh, but you will find in me that you don't corner the market on feisty, you fatuous freighter of falsiness.

You called me a selfish senior. "Your" seniors aren't selfish, but all the other seniors are. I just retired in July and started Social Security and Medicare, and in all the paperwork my wife and I waded through, nowhere do I remember being asked if I was Republican, Democrat, or Independent.

So how do you tell us apart, you risible rotunda of righteousness? I worked from the year I was 12 years old. I made my first Social Security contribution in 1955. I started paying into Medicare in the 1960s, like every other hard-working American with prematurely weathered hands and a dream for the future.

On July 1, the day I retired, I took a ceremonial look at my Social Security statement. My first contribution to Social Security was $109, in 1955. I worked for Abilene Blueprint Co. that summer, delivering blueprints around town on my bicycle.

Fifty-seven years later, at age 69, I retired, feeling blessed to live in a country which created a means to let the middle class enjoy some retirement years instead of dropping dead on the job at age 80. Social Security and Medicare made me feel like I was their partner, and that made me feel important, waking up on that first morning of retirement. "Thank you, there, in Washington, D.C.," I said. "I am going to frame that card you sent me in 1955, which today feels like a diploma."

And it still does, Mr. Chris Christie, you CostCo quantity of Crisco. Did you know that, from your right side, your body looks like a map of New Jersey and Delaware? If that was the party's keynote speech last night, you supercilious salon of superiority, I and my wife are going to thank God every second for the rest of our lives that we aren't incarcerated in the Republican Party, you dreadnought of disrespect.

I was ready to post, but I have an editor who sits on my left shoulder. "Better check the speech transcript," he said. I found the transcript at The Washington Post website. He read it out loud:

"We believe in telling seniors the truth about our overburdened entitlements. We know seniors not only want these programs to survive, but they just as badly want them secured for their grandchildren. Seniors are not selfish."

"He didn't say, 'Our seniors,'" the editor said.

"Yes he did," I said. "I heard him. My wife heard him."

"I did, too, the hulking hangar of hubris," said the editor. "But that's not what he meant."

Oh.

Never mind.