Elephants.
In rooms.
Funny thought.
What do they do there?
While we all talk around them?
Do they make sounds?
Do they raise their trunks?
Do they run their tusks at wall hangings?
Do they even have their tusks?
Or are they the kinds of elephants that have been attacked by ivory hunters?
Do they have a store of water in their trunks that they blow at people in the room?
That’d make ignoring them all the more comical.
Do they have a bag of peanuts to sustain them during the waiting for someone to acknowledge them?
In the awkward silences between conversation, can you hear them chewing?
Do they get lonely?
It’s never elephants in the room.
It’s always elephant.
Singular.
Where’s that elephant’s family?
And how did that elephant get there?
Is it always a male elephant?
Or a female?
Is the gender important?
Does the elephant have the ability to understand the content of the conversation?
Is the elephant given the power of human speech?
If no-one acknowledges the elephant at all, then what?
Where does that elephant go?
If the elephant is acknowledged, whose responsibility is it to see the elephant cared for?
Is there an animal handler waiting, just out of sight?
Is there an Elephant in the Room Hotline to provide all these elephants?
What’s not funny is the elephant in this room.
Now.
Where I am.
It’s a large, grey elephant.
A male elephant.
You know…
A normal elephant.
An elephant with impulses and drives that I don’t understand.
An elephant who is preparing for a rampage.
I can see it in his eyes.
But I’ll only realise I can see it in his eyes after the rampage has occurred.
I don’t really know this elephant.
But everyone will want to speak to me about him because we shared a physical space.
Once.
The fact that he’s a grey, male elephant means that he doesn’t need to be described with any descriptors in the future.
If he were a black elephant, or an Islamic elephant, that’d be far more important to any future stories about him than anything else.
But he’s an elephant nonetheless.
And he’s in this room.
Where I am.
Now.
He’s standing next to a pile of money.
That money has been arranged into the shapes of guns.
Many, many, many guns.
Who’d give an elephant money?
Why’d we want an elephant to have an agenda about guns?
We don’t want elephants to hurt people.
Or other elephants.
But it’s important they have access to guns.
And money.
Made from guns.
Right?
I shouldn’t question the money.
Or the elephant.
Or the money.
Or the guns.
Or the money.
Right?
There’s an elephant in this room.
With me.
Now.
#yourewelcome
#imsickofhavingtolistentoamericadefendtheirrighttoarms
#guncontrolmayseemscarybutsodothatmanyunnecessarydeaths
#noelephantswereharmedinthewritingofthisblog
#noelephantscommittedanymassshootingsinthewritingofthisblog
#handinyourgunsamericaimbeggingyou
Shul of Tash 