Citizen Jim: A Good Patriot!

It all started when I was sitting in my home office doing the third rewrite on a newspaper story about the County Commission meeting I'd attended a couple of days before. The first draft of the story was a disaster, of course, because I wasn't sure of the angle; then, after I rewrote it from the point of view of a character I called "Mister F.," I got into hot water for using too many column inches to describe the taste of the paint under my feet, and how tired I was of "eating, throwing up and eating what I throw up."

"The fly on the wall allegory isn't right for this piece," my boss noted underneath a big frowny face he'd drawn in red marker at the top of the page, right beside a huge "D+".

For every word I typed, I deleted three, and for every word I deleted, I slammed my head onto the keyboard. More deleting. Dang!

So when I heard a loud banging on the door, I jumped up and ran down the stairs as fast as I could, hoping there would be some crazy situation confronting me that would distract me from my failings as a journalist.

Unfortunately, it was only a man in a trench coat wearing a pair of plastic glasses which had a false nose and fake mustache affixed to them. He held a walkie-talkie in one hand, and when I opened the door, he said into it, "I'll radio if I need backup. Over. Ma'am, I'm here from the Justice Department. I'm going to need to search your house."

I said I'd need to see a warrant for that, but the man just laughed.

"Listen, Missy, I don't need no stinkin' warrant to search your house. I guess you haven't heard of the PATRIOT Act! My boss, Mr. Ashcroft, he says we can do whatever the hell we want if we think the security of the country is at stake. And it is! Now let me in or I'm gonna smash your face in with a shovel!" he said.

When I went to close the door in his face, the man stuck his foot out to keep it from closing. I leaned against the door with all my weight, hoping he'd withdraw his leg and leave me in peace.

He howled like a dog chained outside during a thunder storm.

"Ooowwww! Goddamn it, Stimpy! That's my fucking foot you're trying to break there!"

"Jim?" I said from the other side of the door.

"My code name's Clive. Now let me in, fer fuck's sake!"

He limped up the stairs in front me, stopping every few steps to say, "You're gonna pay for this!"

When we were both standing in the livingroom, Jim started lifting up books and taking pictures off the wall, replacing them skewed.

"What're you doing?" I asked him. "Quit screwing with my stuff."

"You better go and wait outside. I don't know how long this'll take, but I don't need you standing over my shoulder bitching and moaning every step of the way when I have a job to do," Jim said.

"Ha. Ha. Ha," I said dryly. "Very funny. Next to all those times you called me and said you were that FedEx delivery girl I wanted to date, this is one of your best jokes yet."

Jim shook his head slowly. "You don't get it, do you?"

I shook my head, as well.

"Well, I joined up with the T.I.P.S. program they got there in Washington," he said. "That stands for 'Terrorism Information and Prevention System,' don't you know."

"I thought they decided that wasn't a really good thing to be doing and sort of did away with it," I said.

"Listen, if anyone has tips for T.I.P.S., Mr. Ashcroft's gonna take them," Jim said. "Otherwise, we'll never stop the terrorists and catch Osama bin Laden! God, is your head stuck in the sand?"

"And what's any of this got to do with me?" I asked. "Why are you here to search my house?"

"Yeah yeah. Save it for your court date, Mata Hari. I know what you've been up to, writing your senator and telling people not to vote for Bush in 2004 and looking at those anti-American web sites like BBC.com and whatnot. It's my duty as an American citizen to rat out every liberal commie threat to national security that I know about, and if anyone knows about you, it's me," Jim said.

"Yes, and that's because I love you and because you're my best friend! You know I'm no threat to national security."

Jim stuck a finger in each ear and squeezed his eyes shut, moving his head side to side and up and down several times. "You're in deep doo doo with Uncle Sam, let me tell you, and Uncle George is gonna tan your little hide!" he said.

"And you are deeply full of doo doo, Citizen Jim," I said. "Now take off that stupid disguise and let's go get a steak."

"Mr. Ashcroft says if anyone tries to stop us from searching their house, we can make a citizen's arrest and you'll get taken somewhere and held without a lawyer or a phone call and we don't even have to tell you why or tell anyone we've got you locked up. Because that's the way to keep the country safe and preserve liberty," he said.

"I never heard of such a thing!" I exclaimed. "Are you nuts?"

"It's about security, Stimpy. It's about keeping the nation safe from homeland enemy combatants like yourself. And if you're really my best friend, you'll just tell me where you have the stuff hidden, and I can confiscate it and then I'll leave you alone."

"Where I have what hidden? So you can confiscate what?" I asked.

"Oh, don't be coy," he said. "You're just making it harder on yourself. Now where are they? Be a good girl and tell me."

"You're out of your mind! I'm calling the police unless you tell me what the hell you're babbling about," I said.

"Babbling! That's what you call serving my country? That figures," he shouted. "Now hand over those goddamn weapons of mass destruction or I'm gonna flip you like a mustard gas omelet!"

I barely heard the very end of his statement because I was laughing so hard. I fell to the floor clutching my stomach and rolled from side to side trying to catch my breath.

Jim finally snatched the fake nose and mustache glasses off and threw them at me. When I didn't respond, he took off his trench coat and starting whipping me with it. But I was laughing harder with every smack he gave me.

When I finally composed myself enough to sit up and dry my tears of laughter, Jim was crying into the crooks of his arms.

"I'm sorry," I gasped. "But—"

"Shut up! Shut up! Leave me alone!" he wailed.

My sudden feeling of guilt sobered me immediately. "Oh, precious lamb," I said. "I'm sorry."

"No you're not! You want me to be stuck working for Granny Wolff forever and ever and ever!" he said, still sobbing.

I patted his leg, which he pulled away before stomping the foot I hadn't crushed with the door.

"I was finally gonna have a way out," he said. "I was gonna find those WMDs for Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld, and then I figured they'd find me job in Washington and maybe even give me a medal for helping them show the world who's boss. Then I was gonna quit on Granny. I had it all planned out—on a Tuesday morning, right before the big card game, BAM! And now I hafta go back!"

This made him start bawling again. It was such a pathetic sight that, for a moment, I almost wished I did have those WMDs.

Then I got a great idea.

I went to the kitchen and rummaged through my junk drawer, and returned five minutes later with a bottle of Super Glue, a rubber band, a paper clip, and a wire garbage bag twisty. I dropped these items in a Ziplock bag and wrote "WMDs: Property of Saddam H." in big, block letters with a permanent marker on the outside of the bag.

I handed the bag to Jim. "Here. Take this stuff and give it to the CIA."

He snatched the bag away from me and shook it in my face, scowling. "I oughta punch your lights out!" he yelled. "What the hell is this crap?"

After I listed the contents of the bag, I said, "Look. Just tell them you saw an episode of 'MacGyver' where he used all the same things in that bag to build a bomb that blew up a hundred city blocks of buildings."

"Are you crazy? That's just idiotic," he said, peering more closely at the bag in his hands.

"Don't worry. They won't know the difference," I said and shrugged. "Hey, it's better than what they have so far, right?"

Citizen Jim smiled for the first time in eight years. "Thanks, Stimpy! You are a true blue friend. I'm sorry I almost ruined your life just to prove that I'm a good patriot."

I threw my arms up and laughed. "I can't think of anyone I'd rather have turn me over to the government on false allegations that might lead to my secret execution in an undisclosed location somewhere beneath the Pentagon."

He called his contact on the walkie-talkie as he walked down the stairs. "This was a dud, man," he said. "But I think maybe I saw some suspicious items in my boss's desk at work. I'm gonna go check that out..."

I flashed the peace sign at Jim as he cranked up a rousing John Phillip Sousa march from inside the tank he'd maneuvered a great distance.

Knowing my best friend in the world was protected by all that U.S. steel made the low rumble of the vehicle music to my ears as Citizen Jim slowly lumbered away in the direction of Alabama.

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