Apparently I’m not the only person who loses lots of stuff | Sam Venable
Oh, the shame! Oh, the disgrace!
I’m like the central character in that old Jewish proverb: “I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes. Then I met a man who had no feet.”
If you regularly follow this column (or glance at it while wrapping fish or relining your bird cage), you might recall my epistle from Oct. 8. That’s when I complained about losing a few things around our place. To wit: a set of heavy-duty knee pads, a level, a packet of hose washers, a medical test kit, a framed photograph of blooming wildflowers at our old house and an alarm clock.
I should have counted my blessings.
Except for the sentimental value of the wildflower photo (which, happily, has since resurfaced), the collective worth of my AWOL stuff might be $125, tops.
But by any calculation, my loss is the teeniest-tiniest, ittiest-bittiest of a pittance compared to what went missing from Bob and Nadine Menendez.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. Bars of solid gold. Expensive exercise equipment. A Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible.
And how’s this for coincidence? Just like our wildflower picture, the Menendezes’ things finally turned up. Seems they hadn’t been “lost” in the normal sense, only misplaced. That discovery was made by a team of FBI agents executing search warrants.
If you haven’t guessed already, I’m talking about Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) He, his wife and three codefendants recently were indicted as part of a suspected international bribery scheme.
This isn’t Senator Bob’s first rodeo. He narrowly survived corruption charges six years ago. In fact, he’s the first sitting senator to be indicted on two separate political criminal cases.
What a dolt. You’d think he’d learned his lesson by now. Not for crookedness, alleged or otherwise, but for not knowing how to hide things any better.
For instance, agents found nearly half a million bucks stuffed inside books and the pockets of clothing. Is that as imaginative as he can get? If so, I’d hate to see him in charge of an Easter egg hunt. He’d probably just dump everything in a pile, not even covering it with leaves and grass.
There must be something about clothing and hidden items among politicians. Donald Trump has been indicted for mixing top-secret documents among his golf shirts and shoes.
Speaking of shoes, let’s revisit the proverb I mentioned at the start of this piece. Perhaps Senator Bob and ex-Prez Don took their cue from the late comedian George Carlin: “I had no shoes and felt sorry for myself until I met a man with no feet. So I took his shoes. Now I feel better.”
Sam Venable’s column appears every Sunday. Contact him at sam.venable@outlook.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Sam Venable: Apparently I’m not the only person who loses stuff
