Shotguns, laptops and bonfires: Find ways to reduce stress this election season

Don’t get complacent just because summer’s here: We’ve still got an election going on, you know.

You probably do know, if you watch TV, because ads for the Republican runoff between Casey Cagle and Brian Kemp are still running.

Some of those have shown two guys sitting together, with one holding a shotgun. Reportedly Kemp actually had his gun pointed at some kid, so it looked a little like a hostage situation. The Cagle ad appears to have some old guy threatening Kemp with a shotgun.

I don’t know the dialogue, because I never have the sound turned up. I just assume the younger guy got the older one’s daughter pregnant. So that must be a terrible scandal. Glad I don’t have to hear about it.

The term “shotgun wedding” reminds me that we didn’t really get a lot of the colloquialisms our parents used, but we had a firm grip on “shotgun wedding.” We owned shotguns. We went to weddings. It was the abstinence education of our day.

I mute the TV a lot, because in this contemporaneous world of longwinded high-volume babble like the pointless use of “contemporaneous,” it is important to control your stress. And as far as you know, studies show that watching a lot of TV news can make you angry and depressed.

You can’t keep the sound turned up during commercials, or you’ll not only hear people being threatened with shotguns, you’ll hear promo ads for TV news. And then you’ll start getting jittery, although some local ads during sweeps week sound satirical. (“What PORNOGRAPHY could YOUR CHILD be seeing ONLINE? Tune in at 11 and we’ll show him.”)

If you let the news stress you out, then you won’t get enough sleep, and sleep is crucial to your mental and physical health, research probably shows.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you start to resent the electronics that do. Like you notice that every time you turn around, your laptop or iPad shifts to sleep mode.

You stop to scribble some notes, and it passes out like a drunk uncle. Pick it up to start writing, and it’s dead to the world.

I’ve taken to smacking it, because it really is like the laptop sacked out and you’re thumping it on the head and hollering, “HEY! Wake up! We’ve got to go to work!”

Even more anthropomorphic, you can start typing and the program will freeze and say, “Not Responding.” Like it just blacked out again and you have to grab it by the shirt and shake it.

But that is not the point. The point is you can’t let yourself get all stressed out, during an election, so you have limit your intake not only of the news, but also the shotgun-wedding ads.

All you have to remember here is that aside from state races, Columbus has only two nonpartisan runoffs, for citywide Columbus Council Post 10 and Muscogee School Board District 2.

That means most of the political signs you see along the roadside are for the last election, and it is over. Stick a pitchfork in it and set it afire and call it a monster, it’s done.

During the campaign, we heard dire warnings about the penalty for stealing yard signs. Do you know what that penalty is?

Me neither, but I bet it’s pretty harsh.

Just kidding. Actually I do know: It’s the same as for any other misdemeanor, up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

We should suspend enforcement for all the outdated signs that dead campaigns have failed to collect. We’ve got enough trash on the right of way without leaving those there.

If the city won’t recycle them, then maybe we should designate a collection point where we can have a huge bonfire.

Of course, that might look like a political statement, and you’d need security to make sure people didn’t throw other things into the flames – books, flags, rival sports teams’ memorabilia, incriminating documents, fireworks, etc.

Still it could be a great stress reliever. And it might make the TV news, too.

This story was originally published June 17, 2018 at 1:33 PM with the headline "Shotguns, laptops and bonfires: Find ways to reduce stress this election season."