An email exchange between me and my mother

Mom,

I will respond to your emails later, but in the meantime I just had to drop you a quick note to say: there is a campaign ad running right now here starring.....T Boone Pitkins.

Now, I heard about this ad before I actually saw it. And when I did (hear about it), I embarrassed myself. Because the only thing I had heard about T Boone Pitkins up to that point had been a crack you made one time - we were in a restaurant, and someone across the room reminded you of him ("Look at T Boone Pitkins over there") and I said, "Who's T Boone Pitkins?" and you gave me a brief sketch of a caricature of a crazy, gun-toting "Yee haw!" oil tycoon, and I concluded that T Boone Pitkins was a fictional character.

So. When I heard about this campaign ad with T Boone Pitkins, I couldn't figure out what the hell the person was talking about - was it a cartoon? An actor? Why would McCain get a ridiculous caricature to endorse his campaign?

Hence, foot in mouth. How's that for a caboose pushing a train?

Ed. note: When my mom was small, she was once told in jest by her dad that cabooses push trains. She believed this well into adulthood, until one day she and my father were driving through Saskatchewan and she pointed out a really long train and mused that it must have one hell of a caboose. And my father laughed and laughed (and married her anyway), and my mother vowed to never mislead her children in this way. Now, let us read her response...



I've been meaning to mention those ads in an email for some time now.

It's when we were on the cruise. There was this couple - I'd say he was early 60's and I bet it was his second/trophy wife cuz she was younger and very attractive although those women make looking young and attractive a full time job so coulda been his first. And I pointed them out and said that he was the T. Boone Pickens of the cruise and you laughed and laughed and it was apparent you hadn't heard of him before so I had to explain who TBP was. I certainly didn't intend to have you think he was a caricature but that sort of character sort of is anyway. No he's real and I've read some pretty favourable reviews about his little campaign and how he's kept a low profile of late and apparently put the possum gun down has been thinking purdy hard about some things and has come up up with some ideas that are credible to the American public.