In my eyes, the pairing off between congresspeople tomorrow is not like a high school prom. Rather, it is like a third grade dance.
Bear with me for a second.
The year was 1994. I was in either second or third grade, a time when fear-mongering about cooties was at an all-time high and meetings of G.R.O.S.S. were held every second Tuesday of the month.
And then, for some reason, the school held a dance. So imagine, if you will, this big hall. And colored lights are flashing. And either Right Said Fred or Will Smith in his Fresh Prince incarnation were blaring from the speakers.
And, as you might expect, in accordance with proper third grade protocol, all the boys were on one side of the room and all the girls were on the other, and never the twain shall meet.
Except the powers that be, damn them, had other ideas in mind. They bided their time. They plied us with fruit punch. They let us get good and hungry. They made us wait forever.
And, then, finally, there it was. Borne by teachers like the spoils of a war fought in distant lands, the most enormous cookie tray you've ever seen in your life.
At the sight of this bounty of food, we all lost our collective mind (it's nice to see some things don't change, even in old age). And when the person nearest the tray notified to the rest of us in a scream that these were not just cookies, but chocolate-chip cookies, the roof blew off the building and we advanced upon the food table like the starving, desperate animals we were.
But wait.
Directly in our path was an impenetrable barrier of teachers. We tried to get around them, but to no avail. This was less a Maginot Line than it was a Berlin Wall.
And then the teachers, damn them all, informed us in calm and clear voices that, in order to foster cooperation between the sexes, we would not be allowed to eat the cookies unless we paired up with a girl.
Gasp.
You would think that this set off a blitzkrieg of angry protests and that howls of revulsion filled the air. Consorting with girls? Those prim, clean, overachieving creatures who used thirteen different color pens to take notes and drooled over the New Kids on the Block? Them?
But no. What we did was simple. We shrugged, turned around, and made a beeline for the girls.
Then, exhibiting a confidence and a self-assuredness that, almost twenty years later, I am yet to replicate, I asked the nearest girl if she would get a cookie with me. She said yes, I grabbed her hand, hauled her off to the cookie tray, and claimed my prize.
And then, after I had piled my plate with roughly three pounds of cookies, I turned to the girl who, in retrospect, was my first date, thanked her for her time, and went back to the boys' side of the room, where I could maul my plate of cookies in the appropriate fashion.
Although I will acknowledge that this whole thing almost sound like a euphemistic fable about my first one-night stand, this actually happened. At that age, boys and girls were sworn enemies. The promise of cookies could bring us together for one fleeting, largely symbolic moment. But after that moment was past, we each retreated to our respective enclaves where we ate and plotted about how to make the rest of the school year as miserable as humanly possible for the opposing sex.
Now. I'm not saying that Congress, after they get their cookie tomorrow at the State of the Union, is going to go back to putting thumbtacks on chairs and throwing rocks at each other and tattling to the teacher and spreading rumors about how Johnny leaves skidmarks on his underwear.
In reality, it will probably will be much worse.
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