Doing the limbo

I’ve been a bit edgy, scattered and handball-off-the-wall lately. So much up in the air, and nothing settled. Where will I end up living next month? Will I get the loan I need to start my small business? Will my business get off the ground? Have I miscalculated the market? Can I keep up with these seven-day workweeks? How long can I go without a personal life?

Right now there are more question marks before me than there are on the Riddler’s leotard.

“And now, Batman, you will die. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Not so fast, Riddler.”

And talk about stress. You don’t know nothin’ about stress until your biggest client, a multibillion-dollar international corporation, plays havoc with your cash flow by failing to pay you for seven consecutive weeks. This lapse comes at a time when Christmas bills, a health insurance payment and estimated taxes have left nothing but a quarter for this old altar boy.

If it weren’t for a teller’s check from a brother on Long Island—a loan I’ll repay as soon as that check from the multibillion-dollar corporation arrives and clears—I’d be in deep doo-doo indeed. This weekend my brother gets treated to a chicken parmigiana dinner at Ralph’s Restaurant on Ninth Avenue. Call it family values interest on the loan.

If stress has any upside, it’s the way it can propel the body to action. People under serious stress get things done. Sure, they also tend to gnash their teeth and froth at the mouth a lot, and that extra hour of spin-cycling at the gym might not be driving the turbine of progress, but you won’t find work accumulating in their in-boxes.

And so, stressed but hopeful, I press on to the 99-thousand-dollar answers I seek, doing the limbo and hoping I get all of my moves right before all of these powerful people who control the purse strings to my future.

It’s times like these that I’m reminded why I’ll always be a Democrat, albeit a conservative one. When Democrats remember they’re supposed to be the party of the little guy, and quit kowtowing to the well-heeled, trust-funded elites who think they know what’s best for the little guy, then they’ll have put themselves on the road to recovery. And not a moment before. Little guys don’t need to be told what’s best for them. We’re not looking for handouts. We just want a fair shake as we dip under that bamboo pole.