Saving Saddam

A Freewayblogging Tale

Some names have been changed to protect both the innocent and the not-so-innocent.

As any regular visitor to this blog will tell you, I love hanging signs at Hospital Curve in San Francisco. This stretch of Interstate 101 is positively packed with cars not only during the evening commute, but at most of the time throughout the day.

In a recent post on this blog, I decided to hang a sign at the Hospital Curve overpass which displayed both the current U.S. military casualty count and a picture of Saddam Hussein asking the public a question...

The death toll sign was taken down sometime shortly after it was put up. Maybe at the end of the day or a few hours after being hung there. The Saddam sign, however, stayed up for two days.

On the third day, I figured I might as well go out there and post another sign and maybe recover Saddam's picture as sometimes the signs are just left on the ground after being yanked. I told my son, Mini-Me, to get in the car so we could go rescue Saddam. He looked at me quizzically, and I said, "Just get in the car".

As we headed North on the 101 towards the city and rounded the curve, there he was; Saddam Hussein looking down at me and asking that unanswered question, "Happy?". What started as a hunch, turned into a rescue mission and I looked at Mini-Me in that way only a father can look at his son and said, "We can still save Saddam". That's when the lightbulb went on over his head.

I whipped the car off the freeway at the next exit and made haste for the pedestrian bridge.When we reached the span, there was the death toll sign, laying on the ground in tattered shreds below Saddam's visage. I instructed Mini-Me to quickly pick up the remnants of the torn sign while I removed Saddam from his post on The Bridge of Truth.

When i got home, I tried to put the casualty sign back together but, alas, the "guy who takes down the signs" had left all but one crucial one foot by six inch piece of the sign behind. That clever bastard. "I'm not defeated yet, you son-of-a-bitch!", my mind screamed out.

Realizing that every cloud has a silver lining, I glanced over at Saddam and said, "I've got plenty of cardboard. I'll make another sign for you."