Dawdling digits and thumbtastic things

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Thumbelina 2017 10 16 11 14Green thumb, thumbs down, all thumbs, twiddle your thumbs, Thumbelina – wait, no, not Thumbelina, but all the other “thumbs” are common idioms we use in every day life. “Thumbelina” is a very sad story about a tiny baby, born from a barley corn, and stolen by a toad from her parents. (What do you expect when you get a baby from a barley corn? What the doodle is a barley corn, anyway? We’ll save these questions for later, and get on with the original idea I had for this segue, which wasn’t about Hans Christian Andersen or any of his crazy-sad kid stories.)

Where were we?

Oh yes, thumbs. I was getting ready to thumb my nose at the current lack of thumbs-up recognition for professional drivers, from the first public official since Ceaser himself, to rule with thumbs.

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to “Twitterment,” the new, instant way to hear about whether or not we’re involved in nuclear winter, before the bombs even get here. Yay. Some find it spectacular to have instant access to our leaders. Others find it terrifying, and still others just pretend it’s 1974 and read newspapers. I find myself gravitating towards the newspaper-readers more and more. 1974 was a pretty good year for me. I started first grade and got a pair of pink bell-bottoms. Not bad at all.

I think I keep straying from the point (and yes, there is one) because I’m not entirely comfortable with being governed on a social media platform. I realize this is a “brave new world,” but more and more it seems like a CB Rambo Rodeo that requires a lot of thumb dexterity and not much else. I kind of liked it better when all this “access” wasn’t so based in splash and who can dominate the airways long enough to “trend.” I believe they called that “walking all over” folks on the CB in 1974, didn’t they?

Anyway, the point of all this reminiscing and thumb-stuff is to note that even though the 125,000-plus tweets and re-tweets of our current trucking concerns have reached over 5 million people, they have gone unanswered by those we implore.

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I find it difficult to understand how the trucking industry can be called “heroes of the nation” and be wholly ignored when they get together and speak on the current preferred platform of communication. And this is not a platform we are all comfortable with, or use regularly – I know a whole lot of folks who got a Twitter account for the sole purpose of this communication. Kudos to you. And shame on the people who can’t keep their crappy little comments to themselves, because they can’t possibly mute a Twitter feed, for fear of missing an opportunity to make a crappy little comment. We’ll all know when to put on our hazmat suits and hope for the best, but I’m not sure we’re going to get any replies about trucking.

That doesn’t mean it’s time to quit.

It means it’s more important than ever to speak out. Promises have been made, people have voted, and now it’s time to remind those who made the promises just who they made them to. And if you have to yell loud and long to get someone to pay attention to the people who helped put this administration into office, then I say keep yelling. As a matter of fact, yell louder. I’m over here hollering my butt off for trucking, and I will continue to do so until they listen, or I zip up my hazmat suit and hope for the best.

It ain’t over yet. Tweet on, truckers. Keep calling, keep writing and keep visiting the people voting on and making these laws. They need you a whole lot more than you need them. Remind them of that.

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