Requests that seem reasonable — to me, anyway

According to my wife, I spend too much time chasing rainbows.

She says I’m always wishing for things that will never happen on this planet.

Since she’s put up with this for the past 40 years, I thought I’d unload on you. My apologies in advance.

Here are a few things that I’d li

ke to see:

One entire week wherein car dealers weren’t having a “Sale of the Century,” “Factory Invoice,” “Model Year Close-out,” or any other kind of sale at all. For once, they’d just put their actual “can’t sell it for any less” price on the window and simply ask us if we’d like to come by.

That all candidates for high political office be able to pronounce the word “nuclear.” No more “nookeyur” or “nookyoular,” please.

That body piercing would fade away because everyone finally realized that sticking various pieces of steel “here and there” in the body is neither impressive nor attractive, and we won’t even go into the health issues that can arise. Also, would anyone like to guess where the money in medicine is going to be in about 20 years? My bet’s on tattoo removal.

That every member of Congress be given a test on our current tax code. Operating on the currently unheard of theory (for Congress) that if you don’t understand something, you shouldn’t be making it a law, each member would be summoned alphabetically and asked a question regarding the code. If the question was answered incorrectly, that part of the code would be stricken immediately. This would continue until the entire tax code had been covered. Think things might get a lot simpler?

That film critics everywhere would just admit that the best movie ever made was “Casablanca.” They just don’t make them like that anymore. Too, on the day that Leonardo ever looks as tough as Bogart, the sun will rise in the west.

That someone in government would finally say that he or she hadn’t a clue as to what a proposed program would really cost, but that the best guess would be to take whatever number was being bandied about, multiply it by two, and then raise that by a factor of 10. And that might be conservative guess.

That a company somewhere would have the courage to say: “Our product does exactly what it’s supposed to do and it does it well. Did it 10 years ago. Did it this year. It’ll do it next year, too. Therefore, we’re not stamping ‘New and Improved’ on anything.”

That television weather-guessers would stop using phrases like “shower activity” or “thunderstorm activity” to describe what’s going on. There are either showers or thunderstorms or there aren’t.

An end to all sentences that begin with the words, “I feel like we should…” If such a sentence cannot be started with the words “I think” or “I believe,” then I’d like a complete explanation as to what a “we should” feels like.

That all future political debates be debates. Point and counterpoint. Argument, rebuttal and summation. No more panel of approved questioners. No more arguing over camera angles. Podiums at 20 paces and God help the poor soul who couldn’t meet arguments squarely, summarize ideas clearly, or speak with a modicum of common sense.

That surgeons would announce that they’d developed a procedure to deactivate the part of the brain where songs get stuck and repeat, seemingly, forever. Having “It’s a Small World” turn over in your head for a few hours could push anyone over the edge.

An end to polls. I’m tired of this country being run on the basis of what some small group of people think at any given moment. Given my own “(nearly) normal” thought processes on any given day, I wouldn’t trust my opinion on how to do laundry let alone how to run the country.

And, finally (this one’s for a friend), that some “big wig” in the news world would decide on the correct spelling of Khadaffy Duck’s name (Moamar Ghadaffy, Muammar Khadaffi, etc., ad infinitum) and be done with it.

Rainbows. I’ll catch one someday.

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Send comments to larrysim@comcast.net.