State of the Union

     

On Tuesday evening I sat down to watch President Obama’s State of the Union Address. Apparently this is what mature adults do, or at least adults whose tv shows have been postponed for the address. I’ve watched parts of the address with my parents before, but never have I sat down to watch the entire thing. The first fifteen minutes or so was our president shaking hands with lots of other important people, so by the time he finally spoke I was more than ready to hear every word. Unfortunately, as soon as no more than 10 words came out of President Obama’s mouth, the crowd erupted in cheers. The clapping went on for a moment, and then the president said another 10 words. Again, applause rang through the capitol. After a minute or two the cheers were silenced. Barack opened his mouth again. Not only did he say one sentence, but TWO sentences! The crowd erupted into cheers and THERE WAS A STANDING OVATION. I repeat: THERE WAS A STANDING OVATION DURING THE FIRST MINUTE OF THE SPEECH AND NO ONE EVEN WON A TRIP TO THE BAHAMAS. Don’t get me wrong, I like a good standing ovation as much as anyone else, but I was beginning to think that Barack had planned seven minutes worth of speaking and had allotted 49 hours towards cheering. Fortunately the crowd started to let him speak more, he was able to say more than 12 words without fireworks going off, and he delivered a great address. However, as I was watching the cheering I thought to myself, “If I was President, I would make sure there would definitely be no clapping at my State of the Union Address.” Then I realized that if there would be no clapping at my address, I would actually have time to speak to America, so I wrote down exactly what I thought American needed to know: (Note: I tried to email this to Barack as he was standing at the Capitol, but he must not have had his iPhone on him)

First, I would start off by giving the country the Webster’s dictionary definition of the word ‘America.’ (I’ve learned from every youth talk during Sacrament meeting that this is the only way to start a talk.) There will obviously be no applause, but I will pause .078 seconds for a small chortle.

Next, I will talk about the great advances in technology that we saw during 2014. The most important, of course, being the pulley system. (For those Americans who are uninformed: my kitchen window faces the kitchen window of our neighboring apartment. We got together with them to create a pulley system between the two apartments using some pulleys, a strong cord, and my adorable flower girl basket.) Next to visiting my parent’s home, this has proved to be the easiest way to accumulate free food. Not only are all my neighbors nice, but they’re also good cooks. Unfortunately for them they probably saw the error of their ways the day the system was installed and in exchange for heavenly homemade egg rolls, our apartment offering were blackened cookies that were supposed to be cooked for 7 minutes, not 7 hours. Nevertheless, trade and technology is going well on that front.  

Now would be the time to make promises. Politicians get a bad rap for promising things they’ll never do, so I feel like if they’re going to lie they might as well lie big. During his address President Obama talked about making community college free. I think this is awesome, and I’m all for a more educated country. However, I would not only try to make community college free, but I’d also give every American a free jet pack. How else will people get to college or work? (There’s probably some political minded person out there thinking, “Rachel’s just using satire when she’s suggesting giving everyone a jetpack because she really thinks that sending people to college for free is incredibly expensive and absurd sounding.” WRONG. Jet packs are just super awesome, and so is college.) After this little bit of my speech people will be very tempted to jump from their seats and applaud, but I will wait only .49 seconds for people to breathe in excitedly before I move on.   

My next item of business would be to get rid of the acronym POTUS, which apparently stands for ‘President of the United States.’ Upon reading it the first time on Twitter, I thought it was either a bill waiting to be passed or a deadly disease. This will be the part in the speech where people suggest new names, hopefully with someone suggesting ‘Queen Rachel.’

After that, I will move on to the thanking portion of the speech. This is similar to the Academy Awards, where I will thank my mom, dad, siblings, friends, teachers, and all my peers who created and filled out class google docs during my time at college. The next optional part of the speech will include the unthanks, where I will unthank all those who did not vote for me and the pizza man who promised my pizza would be delivered in 10 minutes and instead arrived in 30. (That part of the speech will only be given if rotten tomatoes have not already been thrown.)

Following is the fact portion, where I will spew off facts about our country, making sure to end all sentences with “…or is it?!” and a loud cackle. For example: “The tax rate is going down….or is it?!?”

After all is said and done, I’d make sure to remind the citizens of the country how wonderful they are. Sure, there are people who lie or cheat or steal. There are people who will just take advantage of others and only look out for themselves. But the good people are outshining the bad. There are people out there that are buying lunch for the person behind them at the drive through, and there are people who are choosing to be honest. There are mothers and fathers everywhere whose first thought when they wake up is how to help their kids. There are people who will let you in on a busy lane on the freeway and roommates who randomly make your bed or text you to let you know they care. There are neighbors that are shoveling sidewalks and strangers smiling and Americans changing the world for better. Let that be you.  

And then, with no applause, I will take off in my jet pack through the secret skylight in the Capitol.