The little green grasshopper

The car pulled out of the driveway and headed for downtown with an unsuspecting rider: one green grasshopper asleep on the windshield — if grasshoppers actually sleep. I don’t really know if they do or don’t. I’m not a grasshopper.

Asleep or not, the grasshopper clung to the windshield as if it was just another jaunt around the block. Little did it know it was in for the ride of its life.

When the car reached 20 mph, the grasshopper enjoyed the cool morning breeze and everything seemed fine. The enclosed garage back home had become stuffy overnight and he needed to air out his wings.

I’m assuming it was a he; I really don’t know if grasshoppers come in “he” or “she.” I made a “C” in Colonel Baker’s biology class back at Briarwood, home of the Mighty Buccaneers.

It was really large and ugly so I just figured it was a he and not a she. The grasshopper, not Colonel Baker — I’m sure he was a he.

As the car continued to accelerate, the grasshopper started to get worried. I knew he was worried because his antennas started to wiggle. Wiggling antennas on a grasshopper is a dead giveaway that they have started to worry about something, usually about being eaten by a bird or lizard. At least that’s what Colonel Baker said.

But in this case of the large green grasshopper, he was just worried about being blown away and the world as he knew it coming to an end. Actually, I guess that’s something really to be worried about — if you’re a grasshopper stuck to a windshield.

At 40 mph the grasshopper, fearing something was now amiss, started to hunker down closer to the glass in order to ride out the horrific windstorm. He was experiencing conditions that had never happened to him before. The faster the car went, the closer the grasshopper pressed towards the glass. It was obvious to all onlookers the grasshopper was no longer enjoying the ride. He was in real trouble. Trying to hold on, he was just hoping to survive.

As the car approached 50 mph, the grasshopper started to slide towards the edge of the windshield, toward the brink of certain death. All hope was lost, and nothing could save him.

Suddenly, at what seemed to be the last second of the large green grasshopper’s life, the car started to slow, the wind stopped blowing, and the grasshopper, its wings battered and one antenna bent to the breaking point, started to move back towards its spot in the center of the windshield. He was now in familiar territory once again. All was well.

Unbeknownst to the grasshopper, he had done nothing to cause his fate of an impending death by the fearful windstorm. He had just awakened to find himself in the middle of the worst storm of his life. Nor had he really done anything to save himself. He was just along for the ride and change finally happened. The driver had simply forgotten something back home and had turned the car around.

In this economy most of us have been grasshoppers — asleep on the windshield, enjoying the cool breeze, going about our lives and not really noticing that there has been a gathering windstorm around us for years.

Now most of us are just holding on for dear life. For at least the next four years, President Obama is at the wheel, and he’s trying to turn this country around.

I just hope we all can hang on until change actually happens. Otherwise there will be a lot of green grasshoppers on the side of the road.