Can we really afford to lose our Bovinians?

California’s thinking of leaving. So is Oregon and Washington.

They’re calling it the #calexit movement. (On a personal note, I’m old and have no idea what all this “hashtag” baloney is about, nor do I care, but I hate it.)

According to an article I recently read in the Seattle Times, Californians, Oregonians and Washingtonites (or whatever you call ‘em) have decided they want to secede from the Union, learn to speak Canadian and throw in their allegiance with our neighbors to the north.

It has something to do with a recent election. You may have read about it in the papers or seen a comment or two on Facebook. Apparently, there was a last-minute surprise in the vote, one with which not every American is entirely happy.

I’m not sure which states would have wanted to secede had the other candidate won; Mississippi, maybe? But what I don’t know about politics is a lot; maybe I’m being unfair to Mississippians.

Regardless, California, Oregon and Washington all want to boogie out of the U.S. of A.

Nobody’s asked for my opinion on this. To be honest, I’m rarely consulted on these matters. This is probably a good thing, since I have no more idea how government works than does our president-to-be. But I’m wondering if those three westernmost states have considered whether this is something they truly want to do.

Sure, residents in those states voted overwhelmingly for Hillary and – let’s be real – Trump doesn’t exactly exemplify the laid-back West Coast mindset. But c’mon, you guys want to pull up stakes and ditch the United States, after all we’ve meant to each other? After all we’ve been through?

Yeah, I know Canada has great universal health care and they’re moving toward legalizing pot, something California, Oregon and Washington have done already. Also, Canadians are big into combating climate change, just like C., O. and W. (Which, I just realized, spells “COW.” If those three states do actually become a Canadian province, they could call themselves “Bovinites” or “Bovinians,” something cattle-related like that. Just a thought.)

The real question, though, and the one nobody seems to be asking, is this: does Canada really want these states?

I’ve spent a lot of time in Canada, beginning one summer when I was just 16; I rode my bicycle from Windsor to Quebec. On that trip alone I met a lot of Canadians and lemme tell ya, their reputation for being nicer than us is earned. They really are nicer.

They’re polite, helpful, kind. And unlike most of the rest of the world, they don’t hate Americans. Or if they do, they hide it better, which is just as good.

But does that mean Canadians want a bunch of rowdy Americans roaming willy-nilly over their borders, maybe doing to their electoral process what we’ve done to our own?

 And as to those (former) Americans, are they going to blithely relinquish their God-given right to pack heat? There is no Second Amendment in Canada and if there is, I think it has something to do with granting Pentecostal Church members educational rights in Newfoundland – I dunno, the website was confusing and I’m lazy when it comes to research.

Point is, the handgun laws are strict in Canada, at least when compared to our own. How would Bovinians (I’ve decided to go ahead and name the new province now; they can change it later if they like) defend themselves against a rampaging Moose?

But the thing I think most Bovinians would have a hard time adjusting to is this: Canadians must buy their beer in special stores that sell nothing else.

It’s probably just me, but I consider the beer store thing a deal-breaker.

Anyway, I’m hoping the Bovinians decide to stick with us. I’d miss them. I don’t want to have to live without Disneyland or great coffee and grunge music. And whatever it is they make in Oregon.

So my advice to the potential secessionists? Just hang in there for now. I know we’re likely in for a rough go of it for a while, but at least we can buy beer at the grocery. Good thing, too, things being what they are. We’re gonna need ready access to beer.

Maybe this hashtag will help put things in perspective: #nobeerstores!

mtaylor325@gmail.com

(616) 730-1414

If only I had loved Spiderman just a little bit more…

My younger brother William collects comic books, Star Wars memorabilia and “action figures” (known as “dolls” to people who don’t collect action figures). I used to think he was a nerd, but he’s actually a pretty cool guy. He was married, has a couple kids—who also collect comic books and action figures—and lives a fairly normal life.

I usually only see Bil (that’s not a misspelling, by the way; he dropped the second L several years ago, don’t ask me why) at Christmas or when somebody dies. We don’t live far apart, but it always seems there’s something else going on.

Bil, along with my sisters and most of the rest of the family, still get together every Sunday at my sister’s place for dinner and whatever game is on TV; football this time of year, I think. I’m the artsy-fartsy one in the family, so it’s my job to know nothing about sports, a job I take seriously and perform to the best of my ability.

At any rate, I stopped by a couple Sundays ago, mostly because someone sent me a spam e-mail—which looked like the real thing—indicating my dad had died. Why someone would do something like this is anybody’s guess. I called my sister immediately and she assured me that—though he’s now using a walker—my dad is still kicking. Just the same, I decided to stop by and check for myself.

Sure enough, my old man was alive and well and watching football, though when he’s in his easy chair and fixated on the tube it’s sometimes hard to tell for sure.

We all had a big dinner courtesy of my sister Carol and then sat around talking until the kickoff for the Big Game (the one they’d been watching earlier was a Little Game, apparently). It was during this pre-game conversation that I learned Bil had recently opened a comic book store in Grand Rapids.

I was impressed. Imagine, one of my wayward clan operating a legitimate business rather than engaging in the drug-running and off-track betting parlors which have supported the Taylor family for so many generations.

Bil, who in “real life” is a nurse, said it was something he’d always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized it really was the culmination of a lifelong dream for my bro.

From the time we were little kids, William and I both read and collected comics with the ravenous appetite of a starving weasel set loose in a henhouse full of portly pullets. Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Dr. Strange…we read ‘em all.

My collection was carefully arranged in a large, dusty pile beneath my bed. I kept my comics there for two reasons: 1) I didn’t care what happened to them, and 2) they excelled as camouflage for the torn-out pages I had purloined from my old man’s “Playboy” magazines.

Bil’s comics were read once, tucked into cellophane bags and placed—carefully—in a dresser drawer, later to be transferred to acid-free boxes and stored in whichever room in the house had the closest thing to a humidity-free atmosphere. Even back then, he was planning for the future.

My brother William was the ant and I was the grasshopper.

He continued collecting through the decades until he had hundreds, thousands of every type of comic imaginable. I, meanwhile, got rid of my comics as soon as I was old enough to no longer need a place to hide my girlie mags.

And now he is the proprietor of Bil’s Used Books and I’m eking out a living as a freelance writer and eating a lot of Ramen noodles.

If I were Aesop, I could find a moral here somewhere.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.