Upon waking from his midday nap and taking a good long stretch, President Obama meandered into the kitchen. He stood there wondering to himself whether he was hungry, thirsty, or both, when his vegetative musings were side-tracked by the pronounced dripping of the faucet. Goodness gracious! Was that old thing still dripping? He’d been meaning to get around to replacing that old washer for, oh, two, three year now, it must have been.
Not a life-or-death situation, but all those little drops must add up over time, he thought. It’s not the biggest job, either, but it’s not necessarily a simple job. He’d have to crawl under the sink and shut off the water, find some wrenches, remove the stem valve…and frankly, he wasn’t sure if he had any spare washers he could scrounge around for that would fit. He might have to take a trip down to the hardware store. Even if he had some washers, there’s the problem of tightening them just so. Too tight, and the handle won’t turn. Too loose, it still drips. But those were just technical issues.
The President drifted off into another room as these ideas were percolating through his thoughts, hemming and hawing over the Republican accusations of runaway government spending, and lingering mightily at the prospect of what the water utility’s lobbyists might say. He didn’t want to rush headlong into the job hastily getting everybody riled up, but neither did he want to fritter away another afternoon just lolling around or warming a chair. That’s not what he came to Washington for. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled up short in the middle of the job, ending up with a useless sink.
He vacillated between considerations, ambled about, hesitated, then moved slowly on again, before finally deciding he wasn’t going to diddle daddle with this fiddle faddle any longer. Not this time. Fixing that faucet was the right thing to do. Heck, he could probably stimulate the economy, save the taxpayer some money over the long haul, and claim environmental stewardship, while he’s at it. He reckoned he should probably just mosey on down to the hardware store, and take a gander at their washers, first thing in the morning.
