My Presidential Platform: Security Detail

The previous plank in my presidential platform can be read here. Read all posts here.

I already have a security detail. My overprotective Jewish parents have been tracking my every move since birth via any and every means available to them. While this is common behavior for Jewish people on the East Coast, where symptoms of a clinical anxiety disorder are often confused with “fun” and “love,” it is not appropriate behavior for the parents of a normal 35-year-old. It is, however, appropriate behavior for the security detail of the President of the United States.

Recently, questions have arisen about the efficacy of the Secret Service. The Secret Service has got nothing on my parents. My parents have stated outright that they wish they “could put a tracking device on [me]” and “follow [me] on a big board.”

Now, they will get their chance. My parents will be in charge of my security detail. They will track my whereabouts. Or rather, they will continue to track my whereabouts.

My parents’ protective capabilities are just as good, if not better than, the Secret Service’s. Some credentials:

Our house was childproofed so thoroughly that until I was eight, all sharp edges were wrapped in orange foam rubber secured with duct tape. Because of the colors, I thought this was a decoration. To minimize fall potential, my loft bed was only three feet off the ground, though a railing was also affixed.

Believing that a smoke alarm directly above my bunk at sleepaway camp contained a small amount of radioactive material, my parents, without my knowledge or consent, had the offending object moved–to above another girl’s bed. (Belated apologies to fellow Summer ’96 residents of The Ark. Have all of you who have attempted to been able to conceive naturally?) For similar reasons, they confiscated the pitchblende from my rock collection. Bomb-sweeping will come very naturally to them, and their golden retriever, who is unusually high-functioning due to the aforementioned vitamin regimen.

My parents have also demonstrated an ability to collaborate with local law-enforcement agencies. Once, intuiting that a writing residency I had won in Alaska might not be well-organized, my mother called the Alaskan State Troopers, did a thorough background check on the residency organizers, and gave me an effective, if unrequested, briefing. I still have not been to Alaska.

Most impressively, my security detail has tracked me down on not one, but two, off-the-grid subsistence farms, one of which was located in the Peruvian Andes.

These are just the instances I know about. I have spent a good deal of time trying to run a one-woman Witness Protection Program to gain age-appropriate privacy and independence from my parents. Now I can give up that futile effort. Like all presidents, I will exist in a bubble of blissful ignorance as to any and all real or imagined threats on my life, and the considerable efforts made to prevent them.

Next plank: Ethics, Baseball and the Elimination of the Senate