I'm was no Kamala Fangirl, Maybe Neither Was America

When I see election results of these past few months, the double-digit swings in Democrats’ favor, I wonder where were all these double-digit swings when we really needed them in November 2024?

My intention isn’t to bash voters, Democrats, or Kamala Harris--the Democrats' nominee for president in '24--I’m asking because we must know, or the party risks losing those votes again. Why didn’t the 80 million voters who enabled Joe Biden to knock out Donald Trump in 2020 come back and help Harris knock him out in ‘24?

Only about 75 million voters came out for Harris, while Trump got 77 million. That's 5 million voters who, for whatever reason, couldn't be bothered to vote for her. Since her defeat, I’ve wondered if my lack of enthusiasm about her mirrored America’s lack of enthusiasm about her. Yes, I voted for her, but unenthusiastically. 

I will not address the party’s decision to change horses in mid-stream, to suddenly dump a sitting president—who’d proven he could beat Trump—and replace him with the only other person who could continue what had been the Biden-Harris campaign. When the change was made, the polls were in Harris’ favor. It’s sad to conclude that, perhaps, the more that voters learned about her, the less they liked her.

I’ve been familiar with Harris since she was a controversial district attorney running to be Attorney General of California, and to me her campaign style has long demonstrated a sense of entitlement, as opposed to inclusiveness. Her resume has the look of an individual who’s always looking for a promotion.

We admit Harris, as a candidate, faced two built-in challenges:  a person of color, and a she. A sad but simple fact is, a substantial number of voters will not vote for a woman or a person of color. How many votes Harris lost for the simple reason she wasn’t an old white dude like Biden, we’ll never know. Her loss cannot be completely blamed on her sex and race, but we must acknowledge the reality.

Obama was able to overcome the racial bias that motivates a certain stream of American culture—partly because blacks supported him in numbers not seen since, and partly because many progressives, many blacks, and many whites, were excited to vote for the first black president. It may be DEI but it was good DEI. Harris didn't generate that level of interest.

Perhaps one potential explanation concerns her approach to racial identity. She’s of mixed parentage, but insists she’s black. Obama has mixed parentage, too, but a large portion of America apparently accepts him as a black man with a white mother. Harris’ ancestry is more complicated, harder for race-obsessed conservatives to get their heads around.

Harris is black—by the old one-drop rule--but she's more than half-Caucasian—her Indian-American mother is identified as “Caucasian” on Harris’ birth certificate. Her father is identified as "Jamaican" (technically not a race)--and he’s of mixed racial ancestry.

When Harris addresses race, she often adopts what strikes me as a tone of entitlement, as opposed to inclusiveness. She started school about the time her mother moved to Berkeley around 1970, when that liberal community was voluntarily desegregating its schools through a controversial busing project. Yet Harris often brags about being in the second class of students bussed to integrate Berkeley's schools like it makes her one of the Little Rock Nine.

She also demonstrated a potential lack of perspective about American identity politics during a radio appearance with Charlemagne tha God in 2019. She tittered about how she used to "inhale" marijuana and supported legalization because, "I'm Jamaican.”

You’re not Jamaican, Lady, you’re American.

Her own father responded, "My deceased parents must be turning in their graves right now to see their family's name, reputation, and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics."

To say nothing of how she surely turned off voters who oppose marijuana decriminalization.

A similar sense of entitlement may describe her debate style. When Democratic candidates for president debated on TV, in late 2019, Harris was among several candidates who broke debate rules, as if her face time was the only thing. The debate quickly became a Spartan-style shouting match. She admonished the others, "America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we're going to put food on their table."

Barely was that out of her mouth, though, when she began her own Spartan-style shouting match with Biden, relentlessly haranguing him about busing in the seventies—nothing to do with putting food on anybody’s table. Every time he tried to answer, she interrupted--which she’d just scolded others about.

What issue may have hurt Harris’ presidential campaign the most, though, was how she failed to counter Trump’s bluster about how she’d get us into war. True, she couldn’t exactly publicly disagree with the policies of the administration she served, and the handling of the Gaza situation wasn’t one of the Biden adminstration’s strong points. Except she could have said something like, “We must find a solution equitable to the interests of Israel and the human rights of the people of Gaza.” 

Instead her acceptance speech at the Democratic convention showed typical Washington-insider militarism, "As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world." Most lethal? Did she think we were in danger of not having the “strongest, most lethal” fighting force all of a sudden?

Harris chose to follow the Washington establishment’s framing of bipartisanship as well as its framing of war and peace. Such was demonstrated during a radio interview in which she was questioned closely and at length about whether she'd have a Republican in her cabinet.

She could've answered, "I will select my cabinet members by their qualifications, not their political affiliation.” She never did, but she and the interviewer treated the subject as a hot issue, belaboring how she would put a Republican on her cabinet, nothing about Gaza, or putting food on the table.

Then in the final critical days before the election, she did little but make appearances with Republicans, to the point where many Democrats may have wondered, “What party is this woman campaigning for, again?”

Alright, so she thought she had sufficient Democratic votes, so court Republicans, too. Except Harris being pals with the likes of Dick Cheney had to cost her more votes than she gained. Many, many Democrats who still smart from the Iraq-Afghanistan era will no sooner have anything to do with Dick Cheney, or anyone who has anything to do with Dick Cheney, than with Donald Trump.

On one hand, we could say, don’t belabor what happened in 2024, that’s water under the bridge. On the other hand, the anti-Trump vote won’t stick around on its own. It didn’t stick around in 2024 and we need it to stick around in 2026.

Book Review: Custer Died For Your Sins

Book Review:  Custer Died For Your Sins by Vine Deloria, Jr., (University of Oklahoma Press, 1988 ed. with new preface by the author)  

When Custer Died For Your Sins was published in 1969, it was one of those radical landmark books of the sixties, that era of free thinking and fighting the establishment. It was an example of how the civil rights struggle was affecting a wide range of minority groups, of various racial, ethnic and sexual identities--and those groups were beginning to ask, "What about our right to equality?"

Reading the book now, though, I find much of what Deloria says is just plain common sense, and of course, as someone who lived through the sixties, I do recognize that some specific issues he discusses  have become dated (his chapter on Indian leadership, for example). Still, though, I find much of his material does remain radical, continuing to challenge some widely held attitudes.

One example is how Deloria argues that what was called "civil rights" when the book was first published (and which is now often labelled "DEI") is not about seeking equality--it's about seeking respect. Nowadays that assertion could make for a heated discussion on social media.

What may be most relevant, though, to our contemporary political climate--not just when addressing Native American rights--is his description of America's political parties. He begins by asserting, "Republicans represent the best of the white economics. The Democrats represent all of the deviations." White economics? Deviations? I can already picture social-media influencers debating those assertions.

Here's Deloria's description of the Republican Party, "The Republican Party has ostensibly stood for less government as a political philosophical position. But when you listen carefully to the Republicans you do not really hear less government, you hear a strange religion of early Puritan mythology. The Republican Party is in reality the truest expression of America's religion of progress and white respectability. It stands for the white superman who never existed. The peddler's grandson who conquered the unknown by inheriting a department store--such is the basic American religion unmasked."

Explaining the Republicans as a religion rather than a political party perhaps explains why they don't care if the poor starve and the sick die (remember, "We're all going to die," that Republican woman said, defending her vote for cutting Medicaid), and why they constantly follow a leader they often literally view as a sort of Messiah. Any deviation from the party leader is utterly unthinkable. Now it's Trump, but a half-century ago it was Reagan, before him, Eisenhower, before him, Theodore Roosevelt, and back when the party was founded, Lincoln. 

Deloria further argues, "The measure of truth in the above assertion is the Republican willingness to lose elections rather than depart from cherished doctrines and myths. Only a religion can attract and hold such loyalty." 

Nowadays, of course, today's Republicans appear to have given up on winning--or losing--elections by clinging to their cherished doctrines and myths. They're now resorting to attempting to rig elections, "rather than depart from cherished doctrines and myths."

As for the Democrats, they won't appreciate what Deloria says about them either. He argues, "The other party is something else. Popular conceptions [maintain] that the Democrats are the party of the people. The old [Franklin] Roosevelt coalition of labor, minority and ethnic groups, and farmers fails to acknowledge one unpublicized member--the special interests." 

Those of us familiar with how people talk about politics know that "special interests" tends to be used derisively, as a label that's put on "big money," what supposedly "corrupts" politics--Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Tech, and so on. People tend to forget that any group of people who share a "special interest" for any reason are a "special interest group." In that way, labor is a special interest. Farmers are a special interest. Minority and ethnic groups represent a host of special interests, sometimes conflicting ones.

Roughly twenty years ago, the comedian Stephen Colbert graphically demonstrated this aspect of the Democratic party, when he brought TV cameras to a Democratic convention and gathered together a focus group--a black guy and an "Arab-tino," a labor rep and a "tree-hugger," a gay man and a lesbian, an American Indian and an Asian Indian, got them all arguing at once, and then announced how he was looking forward to the Republican convention, "where none of these voices will be heard."

Deloria makes roughly the same point in his own way, "More than the Republicans, the Democrats are the party of the special interests," he argues. "Who else piles special programs on top of special programs? Could the Republicans create the poor as a class in themselves? For, the Republicans know no poor because it is not within their religous comprehension." Once you understand that, you can understand how the Republicans could care less about anything other than helping the rich get richer.

Deloria was writing in the 1960's but we may project his observations into the decades that followed and on up to the present, "Until 1968 the Democrats won election after election by gathering the rejected into an amalgam of special interest for the sole purpose of splitting the pie which they would then attempt to create. The pie never exists; it is continually being created by the adjustment of the governmental machinery to include additional special interests, while eligible parties [those the Republicans deem eligible] participate in the American religion carefully being nurtured by the Republicans in their isolation." Maybe in the past few decades the Democrats have lost some of the coalition it takes to constantly envision and divide an imaginary pie, while the Republicans' cozying up to actual religions--the Christian right, but also the Jewish Zionists--allows them to more freely make no distinction between church and state.

Deloria's book was published shortly after Nixon was elected in 1968, and in it, Deloria states that Nixon's election was the last gasp of the Republicans' "quasi-religous nineteenth-century, Horatio Alger, WASP ethic."

Unfortunately, though, we know that wasn't the last gasp of it. We now know that when Reagan was elected, that was supposed to be the last gasp of it--then "the last gasp" was supposed to be the election of Bush I, then Bush II, then Trump the first time around, and now Trump the second time around. This ethic is getting a lot of last gasps. Maybe it's time to stop thinking of this "ethic" as a "last gasp" and start thinking of it as an ongoing stream of American thought that must be defeated every single election unless we want Republicanism to be both our one and only church and our one and only state.

Deloria's description of the political parties may remain controversial, but he also reminds us that voters, not parties, are responsible for electing our members of congress. His book was published shortly after the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and he made the following observation about the issue of gun control, "Congressman after Congressman came on TV and admitted that a vast majority of the American people wanted stricter gun control laws. But each stated he couldn't do anything about it because of the big bad NRA lobby. Anyone swallowing that type of statement deserves to live in the land of the sniper."

Links to "Life After Mother" in Senior Reporter, Sept. 2025-Jan. 2026

Below please find the links and PDF downloads for my "Life After Mother" column, examining probate and estate issues from personal experience, as featured in Senior Reporter, "Serving the Needs of Orange County and Long Beach," September 2025 to January 2026. 

September 2025:  "Wills and Websites" (p. 37)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/sep-2025-vol-51-no-9/  

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-kbates-sep-2025.pdf

October 2025:  "Survivor's "To Do" List" (p. 32)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/sep-2025-vol-51-no-9-2/

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-bjoel-oct-2025.pdf

November 2025:  "Drug Dealing, HMO Style" (p. 33-38)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/nov-2025-vol-51-no-11/

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-charo-nov-2025.pdf

December 2025:  "Christmas by the Crate" (p. 33)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/dec-2025-vol-51-no-12/

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-johnf-dec-2025.pdf

January 2026:  "She's Being Unusual" (p. 35)

Website Link:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/jan-2026-vol-52-no-1/

 

PDF Download:  https://www.seniorreporterofoc.com/issues/senior-reporter-katew-dec-2025.pdf

Should these links be down, please visit:  www.seniorreporterofoc.com

Trumpers Cause Trumpism

This blog was posted on Daily Kos on Dec. 13, 2025.

As we look ahead to how people are seeking to stop America from becoming completely a one-party authoritarian state in the coming year, let's look back once again on what happened in 2024. The presidential election wasn't the "blowout" or "mandate" that Republicans brag it was, but it was decisive. 

Remember, Democrats--and you "progressives" and "liberals" who brag about no party affiliation, too, how we watched on Election Night as swing state after swing state that turned blue for Biden in 2020 turned red for Trump in 2024:  Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Georgia, all were called for Trump on Election Night. Arizona and Nevada took a little longer, but they were colored red by the end of Election Night, too, the official call a few days later was just a formality, because even if those last two states somehow tallied up enough votes to turn blue, Trump was going to be president anyway.

We do remember 2020, right, when we waited days to make sure Biden had enough of the electoral college to win? When Pennsylvania was finally called for Biden and people literally danced in the streets, right? In 2024 there were no cliff-hangers. We knew by the time Election Night was over that seven states that voted for Biden in 2020 refused to vote for Kamala Harris in 2024 and voted for Trump instead.

Here I'm talking about those 77 million people that voted for Trump in 2024 while Democrats failed to get enough voters in enough states to get the 80 millon or so votes that Biden got in 2020.

I'm not talking about the people who, however reluctantly, voted for Harris. I'm not talking about the people that voted Republican down ballot but left the top slot blank. I'm not talking about the people that voted for a third party. I'm not talking about the people that just didn't vote at all. I'm talking about Trump voters, and I don't want to hear any excuses about, "but the Democrats." I know not a single one of you proud Trumpers may be reading this, but I'm talking about you anyway. 

For many years we've heard how, if only people had the information about progressive left-of-center candidates, then the majority of America's voters would support progressive left-of-center candidates. Back before the Internet and the iPhone, when mass communication was confined to broadcast and print, much of it corporate, back in those days, insufficient desemination of left-of-center viewpoints may have explained the failure of many liberal candidates to gain majority support. Voters, especially low-information voters, couldn't be expected to vote for a candidate about which the mainstream media provided insufficient information.

Now, though, everybody has an iPhone and everybody surfs the Internet. You can no longer blame lack of access to adequate information about progressive candidates and a liberal agenda--or even a reasonably moderate agenda--for why tens of millions of voters across multiple states continue to vote against even moderately progressive candidates and even moderately liberal agendas and for people like Trump, candidates that are not just an ordinary thoughtful type of conservative, but a combination of dangerous, sleazy, and narrow-minded. Either these tens of millions of Republican-supporting voters, across dozens of entire states, flatly and stubbornly refuse to seek out information about left-of-center candidates, or else those millions of Republican-supporting voters honestly do share the values of the dangerous, sleazy, and narrow-minded conservative Republicans like Trump that they vote for. 

You 77 million Trump voters, you knew that your man was convicted of 34 felonies. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You know those 34 felonies were for campaign fraud, as in fraud, a financial crime. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he encouraged an armed and angry lynch mob to "fight like Hell" at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, where that mob voiced its intention to hang the vice president. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was impeached for sending that armed and angry lynch mob to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 to attack and beat police officers and threaten to hang his own vice president. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he told more than 30,000 lies during his first term as president, often lying between the beginning and the end of a sentence--demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that he often is either lying at the beginning of a sentence or lying at the end, there's no way both the beginning and end could be true. That's not even counting all the lies he's told in his lifetime, or the ones he told between 2020 and 2025. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew, if you actually spent any time listening to and thinking about the stream of contradictions that regularly come out of the man's mouth, you'd know he freely makes false statements, even if you didn't keep count. You knew that. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was caught with whole rooms full of classified government documents hoarded at his Mar-a-Lago country club, many of which were not supposed to be removed from a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). (If you don't know what a SCIF is, Google it.) You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew that to have those rooms full of classified government documents hoarded at Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club, the ones that were not supposed to be removed from a SCIF, would have had to have been stolen from a SCIF in order to be removed from a SCIF. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he boasted of grabbing women by the "pussy." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway, and are even now perhaps bragging about how you voted for him three times--while knowing that.

You knew he ran his businesses into bankruptcy six times, so much for "business acumen." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was lying when he said he was going to impose tariffs and make other countries pay them. (If you don't know what a tariff is, or you don't understand what it is, Google it. Keep Googling it until you do understand it.) You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he said not paying taxes is smart. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he cheated on his first wife with his second, got a messy divorce from his first, cheated on his second wife with his third, got a messy divorce from his second, and cheated on his third wife, too. You knew that. You voted for him anyway, so don't lecture the rest of us about "traditional values."

You knew what he said about football players kneeling for a Black Lives Matter protest was, "Get that sonovabitch off the field." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he said he would be a dictator, and you knew his boast about "only on Day One" was a lie, because no dictator is a dictator for one day only. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew that he was for Project 2025 before he started saying he didn't know anything about it, which is what he says about anything he wants to get out of knowing about. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was lying when he said he was going to build a wall between the US and Mexico and make Mexico pay for it. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was lying when he said he was going to, "immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One" and all the other lies he told about bringing prices down. You knew no president in a capitalist system could do that. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he insulted several countries in Africa with an obscenity. You knew that, you had no excuse not to, and you voted for him to lead America's diplomacy anyway.

You knew he ordered the extra-judicial killing of an Iranian general in a time of peace. You knew that. You voted for him anyway.

You knew that when Iran retaliated for the general's death, injuring numerous US personnel, Trump shrugged off the brain damage our servicemembers suffered as, "some headaches." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he lost a fraud case against Trump University. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was the closest friend of convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein for ten years, that they were photographed partying up and oggling women together, and Trump bragged about how, "he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them on the younger side." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway, possibly at the same time you were repeating salacious gossip linking Clinton and Epstein.

You knew Trump looked out over a veterans' cemetary and said, "I don't get it. What's in it for them?" You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he didn't attend a memorial service for D-Day because it was raining and he didn't want to mess up his hair. You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was caught on tape telling the Georgia Secretary of State, "All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes . . . I only need 11,000 votes." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway. 

You knew he also told the Georgia Secretary of State, "That's a criminal offense, you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you." You knew that. You had no excuse not to. You voted for him anyway.

You knew he was impeached for telling the head of a foreign government, "I would like you to do us a favor though," for which the "favor" was spreading false dirt on Trump's political rivals in exchange for fulfilling defense contracts, which is an obvious quid pro quo. No matter how often Trump brayed it wasn't. You knew that. You had no excuse not to, and if you didn't understand it, you could've Googled it until you did. You voted for him anyway.

You Trump-supporting farmers out in the reddest regions of the reddest states, you experienced back in Trump's first term, he left thousands (at least) of you with no markets to sell to, and thousands or even millions of you farmers voted for him all over again anyway. You were willing to ruin the market for your crops again because, transgender athletes, was that it?

What else? There's about 30,000 "what else" but we have to end this list somewhere. This is the man you freely chose as your president, as the leader of our country. You wanted a man who lies tens of thousands of times to lead your country. You wanted a guy who crimes dozens of times while white (nearly three dozen convictions and almost that many accusations) to lead your fine and mighty country. Apparently the man can't do enough criminal things for you to think he's criminal. Apparently the man can't do enough dishonest things for you to think he's dishonest. Apparently the man can't do enough sadistic things for you to think he's sadistic. Or else you want a president who's dishonest, criminal, and sadistic, because that's the kind of guy that speaks for you.  

We can only conclude that for roughly 77 million of you, that's your idea of a really good president. Not just a few million of you, not just a few tens of millions of you scattered around backwards pockets in super-conservative states, but enough tens of millions of you to turn seven entire "purple" states red--all of them the same states that demonstrated in 2020 that they can muster a majority of voters who know better than to vote for a liar and a fraudster--and that was before he was a 34-time convicted criminal, an unauthorized hoarder of classified secrets, and sent an armed and angry lynch mob to hang his own vice president. 

What happened to that blue majority in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Minnesota? Why didn't they turn out the numbers to beat you? That's another blog.

Weird Guys: "Wheel me Back in!"

 Continuing my series on my experiences with one or more weird guys, I invite others to share their "weird guy" stories as well.

My beat-up Volkswagen needed some repairs to its upholstery, and this was in the eighties when you didn't Google "auto upholstery" shops. You looked in the Yellow Pages and then went to check out likely addresses. 

I was checking out an address in Wilmington, that community that's centered around the Port of Los Angeles, and the address I found turned out to not be an auto upholstery shop, just an auto parts store. They were probably just listed in the phone book because they sold sheepskin seat covers, or something like that, but I thought I'd stop in anyway. One of the clerks might be able to suggest a good auto upholstery shop nearby, or something.

I parked on the street right outside the store's door and went in. There appeared to be only one employee, a woman at the cash register, and she had a line of two or three customers. Near the check-out counter was one other person, a skinny pale-faced pale-haired young man in a wheelchair, and he spoke using of those tracheostomy valves inplanted in his throat.

He looked at me and demanded, "Why are you here?"

I explained I was here to see about getting my car's upholstery repaired.

"Show me your car!" he demanded.

"I need somebody who can give me an estimate for repairing my car's upholstery, do you know somebody who can?" I asked.

"Yeah, yeah, show me your car!"

I figured, no harm in being courteous to him, after all, he might be the check-out woman's son or something. I said, "Fine, I'll show you my car, it's just outside the door."

I held the shop door open and he wheeled out onto the sidewalk. I pointed to my battered Volkswagen and the torn upholstery. "See?" I explained, "That's the upholstery I want repaired."

His immediate response, "Wheel me back in!" 

Not only nothing about the car he was so hot to see, but not even, "Could you please hold the door so I can get back in the shop?" Not even a "please." Kings commanding their servants have more courtesy than he was showing me.

I knew I was wasting my time. I smiled sweetly as I got my keys from my purse and started to get in my car, at the same time saying, politely, "You got yourself out here. You can get yourself back in." 

I got in and started the motor, looked in the rearview mirror. He was struggling in his chair and glaring at me, as if utterly furious, as if he wanted to get out of that chair and pound me into the ground. I drove away.

I encountered a similar type in 2017, not in a wheelchair, but who apparently just thought women were put on this earth for him to make any demand of, anywhere, anytime. I was on a road trip in New Mexico and pulled over to read a roadside historical marker. At least there were other people around, it wasn't like it was a deserted stretch of highway.

I was minding my own business, reading the marker, when a voice demanded, "Gimme your camera! Lemme take your picture!"

I didn't even have my camera on me--it wasn't like it was in plain view, so even his assumption that I had a camera to give was weird.

Not, "Excuse me, Miss, but would you like me to take your picture?"

I looked at the guy and gave a blistering, "No, thank you!"

"But you look so cute," the guy whined, like that was an excuse.

I didn't finish reading the historical marker. I went straight to my car and got the You-know-where out of there. I checked my rear-view mirror a few times to make sure I wasn't being followed. That's the scariest on-the-road encounter I've ever had.