Last week I covered up the front of the microwave in our kitchen with some cardboard.
Kelly Ann Conway, one our new president’s most trusted advisers, told me to.
Well, not exactly, but I saw her on a television news show trying to explain how many different ways former President Obama may have been “surveilling” the soon-to-be President Trump before the election last November and one of those was to watch him through his microwave oven.
I certainly didn’t want Barack to start seeing me microwave my day-old coffee or the cheap hot dogs I make myself at lunchtime, but that information would pale to the conversations that go on in the kitchen from time to time. You know, things like “what are we having for dinner tonight” and “the dog barfed on the kitchen floor again.”
It also made me think about all the ways I could be watched, you know, being a so-called journalist and all. How many electronic devices do I have in my house, my office and even that I carry with me all day long that could reveal my political leanings. “They” could tap into anything.
I was thinking that I was lucky I don’t have a pacemaker; that would make it hard to keep them from watching what I am doing, or at least measuring my heart rate to see if something was exciting me.
What’s to be done?
So I began a conversation with my wife about what we needed to do.
“We are going to disable, cover up or paint over every single thing in this house that could be used to watch us,” I told her to her dismay. “Let’s begin with your C-Pap machine. I don’t want anyone watching you and me while we are sleeping.”
She got this look on her face.
“Say what?” she exclaimed. “Who’s watching us?”
“You know.” I said. “Michelle and Barack and all those liberals. They are out to destroy the country and will do anything to stop us.”
“From doing what?” she said.
I was a bit stumped for a minute but I knew I could come up with an answer.
Navajo code talk
“You know, having conversations about anything that doesn’t fit their political agenda,” I said as I was coming up with an even better way to obscure our private life. “You know what, maybe we could develop a kind of code talk, like what the military did in World War II by using Native Americans speaking their tribal languages to confuse the Germans.”
“We don’t have a special language,” she said, realizing she was responding to something that was a completely ridiculous idea anyway.
“Well, we could develop one,” I said, thinking back to the days when we had little kids in the house and how we talked to them. “When I need to talk about something that is politically sensitive I could say to you ‘Do you want your binky?’ and you could say ‘Mr. Doodles is in the back seat of the car.’ That would mean we needed to go out to the hay barn where the only being that could hear us is the horse, and then we could have a real conversation. They wouldn’t even know what we were talking about.”
My wife smiled.
The horse is liberal
“Well I think the horse is a liberal, you know being so closely related to a donkey and all,” she said.
“Oh, you’re right,” I exclaimed, realizing that my plan had a fatal flaw in it.
She rolled her eyes.
But I was determined. I didn’t want the CIA, the FBI, the ATF, the NSA, the Secret Service, Army Intelligence, the FDA, the USDA, the DMV, UDOT, or the Carbon County Commission knowing anything about what we were talking about in our house.
“You know what, let’s just get rid of everything in the house they could possibly surveil us with,” I said. “Out with the computers, I-Pads, cell phones, the televisions, the appliances, the radios, and that GPS thing you bought me for Christmas. We could do without all those things don’t you think?”
“Well that would mean we need to get rid of your new car too,” she said. “All the cars now are connected to the world. And they might find out what kinds of words you utter about other drivers on the road when you feel they are not competently operating their motor vehicles.”
That made me think. My new car. The vehicle that I have been wanting for all my days and finally have in my late-life crisis? That bright red, bring me joy, wind in my hair, 0-60 in 4.2 seconds, fine machine. I had to weigh my options and it was hard. But I finally came up with a decision.
“Never mind,” I said.