I can't imagine

a job more difficult than being a customer service clerk at a retail center

the first several days after Christmas.

You couldn't

pay me enough to be the person who has to smile and be gracious to people

who have stood in line too long, eaten too much, stayed up too late, and

consumed way too much caffeine and sugar.

At last, it

is upon us again, the return season. In honor of all of those misfitting

gifts, and in tribute to all of those gift-givers who didn't quite find

their mark, I thought I'd suggest a few returns of my own, just for fun.

These are things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but have far

exceeded their shelf life.

For starters,

let's return all of those water saver shower heads and toilets. If you

have to run around in a shower to get wet, it's inevitable that you will

run the shower longer, and waste time to boot. I hear you can retrofit

your shower head with some patience, a good eye, and an electric drill.

I don't even

want to get in to the whole water saver toilet thing, because most of

you have one, and you know where I'm going with this. Where is water saved

with three times as many flushes? There must be a black market somewhere

for those good old-fashioned single flush fixtures. Maybe I'll look on

eBay.

How about we

return all that extra money we paid in taxes, to both the state and federal

governments, over the last few years to the people whose pockets it came

from. We're all bankrolling this great pay down of debt so government

can be more fiscally responsible, and running up a fistful of our own

to offset the net loss in income to higher taxes. Then the feds sit around

and contemplate the dip in consumer confidence, the downturn in spending,

and suddenly all of the "It's the economy, stupid" pundits are

scrambling for something that everyone is happy about so the people won't

see just how gross and inefficient big government really is.

While we're

at it, let's return the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA),

and the constitutionally suspect law that authorized this nonelected governing

body to "activate jurisdiction" over local planning and zoning

issues and levy taxes. That's taxation without representation, and over

two centuries ago, we fought a revolution and wrote a constitution to

protect ourselves from it.

Granted, they

haven't sent us any bills yet, but they are authorized to do so, which

usually means they will.

Let's return

our natural gas service to pre-deregulation days.' It's odd that I never

had a billing problem, never had a service problem, and never paid as

much for natural gas as I do now that there is "competition."

The same thing happened with phone service quite a few years back.

Next time the

government tells us that deregulation is the best way to guard against

consumer rip-off, hold on to your wallets. In my mind, gas deregulation

is all about driving up fuel prices to discourage waste and alter consumer

behavior.

If the government

had done that themselves, we would have spit and hollered, and incumbents

everywhere would be looking for jobs. So they convinced the gas suppliers

to be the bad guys, created the illusion of mass shortage with the help

of mass media, and there you have it, high demand, low supply, big rates

and big profits for suppliers, big bills for consumers, with the end result

being an overall reduction in energy consumption.

Have you wondered

why suddenly the energy industry is running commercials? When was the

last time you saw a commercial for coal? It's a squeeze play, folks. Give

me the good old days of the Atlanta Gas Light monopoly any day.

We simply must

return those dastardly punch ballot machines in Florida. I'd hate to think

I ever had to live through another media engorgement of such epic proportions

again. Please, no more pregnant chads.

Why don't we

even return the word "chad?" No offense to the country, of course.

Maybe all the Chads could use the more formal Chadwick instead.

And last, but

certainly not least, let's return Bill Clinton to Arkansas. Since we're

in the mode, we may as well go ahead and return Hillary's eight-million-dollar

book.

She probably

won't be able to keep any of the money anyway, if Republicans in Washington

are conscientious about their job, and frankly, who cares about how she

felt during the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal? The American people didn't

even care about perjury, obstruction of justice, or even impeachment.

Just keep it

for yourself, Hill, really.

(Your comments

are welcome: [email protected].)