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D. None of the above

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I didn’t see a horrifying and preventable accident this morning. I didn’t see a little girl, let’s call her Erica, on her way to her first week of school.

Erica, who, in our story, is 10 years old, wants to be a veterinarian, and has pictures of animals all over her room. She begged her parents so long for a kitten that they relented. They saw how well she took care of the kitten, putting drops in her eyes when she needed them, making sure she got the correct shots and even holding her kitten in the office when they had to draw blood to test for feline leukemia, which, fortunately, her kitten didn’t have.

Two years after she got her kitten, Erica continued to ask for additional animals, adding a fish, a rabbit and a hamster to her collection. Each morning, Erica wakes up and checks on all the animals in her little zoo, well, that’s what her father calls it, to see how they’re doing.

Her mother is convinced that the animals respond to her voice, moving closer to the edge of the cage or to the door when they hear her coming. When mother leaves to pick up Erica from school, the animals become restless.

I didn’t see Erica walking with her best friend Jenna. Like Erica, Jenna has a dream. She wants to pitch for the United States in softball in the Olympics. Jenna is much taller than her best friend and has an incredible arm. Jenna hopes the Olympics decides to have softball when she’s old enough and strong enough to play. Jenna thinks bringing a gold medal to her father, who is in the Marines and has traveled the world protecting other people, would be the greatest accomplishment she could ever achieve.

I didn’t see a man, whom I’ll call Bob and who lives only four blocks from Erica and Jenna, put on his carefully pressed light-blue shirt with the matching tie that morning. I didn’t witness him kissing his wife Alicia, the way he does every morning before he rushes off to his important job. I didn’t see him climb into his sleek SUV and back quickly out of his driveway on the dead-end block he and Alicia chose more than a dozen years earlier.

I didn’t see Bob get the first indication from his iPhone 7 that he had several messages. I didn’t witness Bob rolling his eyes at the first few messages. I didn’t see him drive quickly toward the crosswalk where Erica and Jenna were walking. The girls had slowed down in the crosswalk because Jenna pointed out a deer she could see across the street in a backyard. Jenna knew Erica kept an animal diary and she was always on the lookout for anything her friend could include in her cherished book.

I didn’t see Bob — his attention diverted by a phone he had to extend to see clearly — roll too quickly into the crosswalk, sending both girls flying. I didn’t see the ambulances racing to the scene, the parents with heavy hearts getting the unimaginable phone calls, and the doctors doing everything they could to fix Jenna’s battered right arm — her pitching arm.

I didn’t see it because it didn’t happen. What I did see, however, was a man in an SUV, driving way too quickly through a crosswalk, staring at his phone instead of looking out for Erica, Jenna and everyone else’s children on his way to work.

It’s an old message that we should repeat every year: “School is open, drive carefully.”

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How difficult must it be to become someone else? Somehow, Abby Mueller, an actress who probably isn’t a household name, transforms into the legendary singer Carole King in the Broadway musical “Beautiful.”

It’s a risky proposition. Many of us already know songs like “So Far Away” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” which means we know what the song should sound like, even if we can’t sing it in tune.

And yet, Mueller, who is clearly the star of a show about another star, pulls it off incredibly well, giving us the energy, the soul, the innocence and the ambition of a remarkable talent.

Watching and, more importantly, listening to the show is a transformative experience. Music has that remarkable power, bringing us back to a car when we might have often heard “Up on the Roof” or sending us back in our minds to a dance party where we threw ourselves across the floor of a friend’s house as we invented our own steps to “The Loco-Motion,” where “everybody’s doing a brand new dance, now.”

Even though the dance isn’t so brand new anymore, it feels revived when we watch the high energy action on stage.

My wife and I snuck away before the end of the summer to see the musical, which left us humming and singing the songs through the next day.

The musical itself, like many other Broadway stories, is a collection of dialogue, a loose story and a compilation of rollicking music. The story line follows the musical career of King and her writing partner and husband Gerry Goffin, whom she married when she was 17 and pregnant. The audience feels as if it’s witnessing the birth of these songs, as Goffin pairs his familiar lyrics to the music King wrote.

The first half of the show, which is considerably longer than the second, is like a collection of musical candy tossed to a hungry audience.

I snuck glances around the room at some of the other people fortunate enough to take a musical joyride and I saw that, like me, several of the guests, who were mostly in their late 40s and older, had smiles plastered on their faces.

The second act doesn’t contain as many songs and delves into the more challenging and sadder parts of King’s life, where she endures the hardship of her husband’s infidelities and the creative tension that sometimes won the battle over his creative talent.

King, as we know, lands on her feet, becoming the legendary composer, singer and songwriter who was inducted with Goffin into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 for their songwriting.

The energy on stage throughout the show, with performances by a talented team reviving the style and moves of the Shirelles and the Drifters, rival the thrill of watching the cast of “Mamma Mia!” who belted out the familiar Abba songs.

The difference here, however, is that the script is not a plot written to tie together songs, but evolves as the backstory behind the early days of music that long ago circled the United States and the world.

“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” definitely lives up to the awards it has won, including the 2015 Grammy for best musical theater album and its two Tony Awards in 2014, which include a well-deserved honor for Mueller.

The only speed bump during this otherwise wonderful ride is the dramatic downshifting in the second act, where the drama, while no doubt true to life, slows the musical momentum. Still, the conclusion and the experience are rewarding, allowing us to reconnect with the legendary singer’s past, and our own.

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I’m not a scientist and I don’t play one on TV. Nonetheless, I think science is undervalued in America. I believe the typical American takes science for granted, thinks science owes them something and figures they’ll never understand what scientists are saying.

Wrong, wrong and wrong.

For starters, science isn’t just about trying to create the best iPhone, the highest quality and thinnest televisions, or medicines that act like magic bullets, destroying evil in our cells or our DNA without damaging the healthy ones.

Science often starts with a question. Why or how does something work? And, perhaps, if we change something about the way it works, does it get better or worse? The conclusions scientists draw when they solve one puzzle leads to the next set of questions.

It’s as if a child asks his parent if he can go west and the parent says, “No, don’t go west, but here are the keys to the car.”

The answer may seem like a non sequitur, but it’s also a way to navigate somewhere new, even if, for whatever reason, the car isn’t supposed to go west. Maybe, by learning more about the car and where it can go, the child also learns what’s so forbidding about going west, too.

We want science to succeed and we’re annoyed when science doesn’t solve our problems. We can’t get something to work or we can’t get ourselves to work and we blame scientists. After all, if we can send a man to the moon, why can’t we conquer the morning rush hour or the common cold?

Then again, how does the study of dark matter — neutrinos or sphingolipids — affect our morning commute? We may not understand these areas, but that doesn’t mean basic knowledge can’t or won’t lead to advances we can’t anticipate.

Knowledge, as we know, is power. If we know, for example, that an enemy is planning an attack and we know where and how that attack will occur, we can defend ourselves, even if that enemy exists at a subcellular level.

Learning the playbook of the enemy takes time, which technological innovation, dedicated researchers and people battling against a disease often don’t have.

Worst of all, though, science is somehow too hard to understand. That is a defeatist conclusion. Yes, scientists use technical terms as shorthand and, yes, they may not be selling ideas or themselves in the kind of carefully crafted tones often reserved for CEOs or politicians.

That, however, doesn’t mean they are planting a keep-out sign in front of them or their ideas. While scientists reduce a question to an attainable goal, they also often keep a larger goal in mind.

A few years ago, my daughter had to draw a picture of what she thought a scientist looked like. Rather than imagine a person in a white lab coat with one pocket full of pens and the other holding a radiation badge, she drew a baby.

Science may be frustrating because scientists often come across as uncertain. For example, they might say, “We believe that the shadow in our telescope may be caused by an exoplanet orbiting a star that’s outside the solar system, and which is the same distance from its nearest star as Earth is from the sun.”

Scientists can be wrong, just as anyone can be wrong in their job, in their opinions or in their conclusions. That, however, doesn’t make science wrong. Scientists are often most excited when a discovery they make defies their expectations or bucks conventional wisdom.

Just because conventional scientific wisdom changes doesn’t mean every part of it is wrong.

Science doesn’t have all the answers and it never will. The most likely person to tell you that, though, should be a scientist, not a journalist.

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Ever walk into a room and wonder why you’re there? As I say to my wife when she looks up expectantly if I appear and then stop in my tracks, I get distracted by air.

We are flooded by stimuli from the bird soaring overhead, to the vibrating cellphone alerting us to an incoming message, to the lists that run in our heads. We have numerous opportunities to lose track of the principle task we assigned ourselves.

I’ve decided on a mantra to deal with these moments and others through the day: “While I’m here.” Yes, I know that’s not exactly a new turn of phrase and I know it’s a type of mindfulness, but my suggestion is about hearing and responding to the phrase.

For example, I might walk into a drugstore to buy shampoo and conditioner. I might realize, before I head to the checkout line, that “while I’m here,” I might also get some dental floss. After all, it’s not like dental floss spoils and, if you’ve seen the movie “Prelude to a Kiss,” you know the old man, once he returns to his own body, advises the young couple at the beginning of their marriage to floss. After several painful episodes with gums that had previously been a breeding ground for painful bacteria, I can attest to the value of that advice.

If you’re a suburban parent and you’re sitting at another baseball game, at a concert or at a dance recital, let’s imagine you’re waiting for the action to begin. “While you’re here” you might want to talk to the parent sitting near you and ask about his or her life or job.

“Hey, wait,” you say. “You’re in the same industry as I am? I had no idea. Of course, I’d love to write an elaborate freelance article that you’ll feature on the cover of your glossy magazine and that will lead to a long and fruitful business collaboration.”

That might not happen, but it certainly won’t if you dive deep into your cellphone to tell someone in another state that you’re not sure whether you’re going to eat the leftover salad from lunch or order chicken with broccoli from the Chinese restaurant down the street.

Maybe you’re at a job interview and you’ve hit all the talking points. You said your only serious flaw is that you take work so seriously that you won’t rest until you’ve secured whatever victories the company needs to beat its closest rivals.

“While you’re here,” however, you might also want to make sure you ask enough questions about the interviewers, so you know their career paths and so you have a better idea of the people with whom you’ll interact if they offer you the job.

Not all the “while you’re here” moments have to be of immediate benefit to you. You might, for example, be on a beach on one of the final days of summer and a strong wind might blow someone’s hat toward you. “While you’re here” you might want to help that person retrieve it. Or maybe you see a plastic wrapper heading into the water. “While you’re here” you also might want to grab this offensive litter and bring it to a garbage can so that it doesn’t damage a fish or a turtle.

If we consider a few times a day what we can do “while we’re here,” we might not only become more efficient, but we also might make that unexpected trip into the room worthwhile. The moment when we’re trying to recall what drove us into the room can transform into an opportunity … “while we’re here.”

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Journalists need to embrace Detective Sgt. Joe Friday’s line from “Dragnet,” “Just the facts, ma’am.”

Caught up in intense public passions, journalists can either throw their opinions at the inflamed cacophony or they can seize an opportunity to do something that has escaped most politicians: Represent broader interests.

We live in a world of spin, where claims and counterclaims come out so rapidly that reality has become a blur. The challenges in sifting through fact and fiction have increased as officials of all stripes shout their truths from the rooftops, even if they have an obstructed view of the world down below.

When I was in journalism school more than two decades ago, a good friend from Bulgaria, who was one of the few people who could pronounce my name correctly when she read it in my mailbox, shared her writing with me.

I noticed a flaw in the way she recorded dialogue. The quotes in her story often lacked the syntax and vocabulary that native English speakers possess. When I asked if she only spoke with other Bulgarians, she playfully punched my shoulder and said she needed to hear better.

That was an unintentional consequence of the way someone who spoke three languages translated the world.

The chasm today between what people say and what others hear, even those who speak the same language, has gotten wider. Editors and reporters return to their desks or take out their laptops, ready to share quotes, events and facts.

These fellow members of the media may find themselves seeing what they want to see, much like the parent of an athlete on a field or a coach who has become an advocate or cheerleader. In editorials, where we’re clearly sharing an opinion, that works, but in news reports we should share the facts, offer context — and increase the value of fact-based reporting.

With facts under regular assault, the search for them, and the ability to verify them, becomes even more important.

A divided nation needs balanced, fair, accurate and defensible reporting. In their publications, scientists share materials and methods sections, which should allow other researchers to conduct the same experiments and, presumably, find the same results. Far too often, opinions disguised as news urge people to trust the writer. Why? Readers should be able to pull together the same raw materials and decide for themselves.

I know government officials don’t always deal in facts. I also know numbers can be repackaged to suit an agenda, turning any conclusion into a specious mix of farce and mental acrobatics. To wit, he’s the best left-handed hitter every Tuesday there’s a full moon below the Mason-Dixon line. Just because it’s presented as a fact doesn’t mean we have to report it or even mock it. If it’s meaningless, then leave it alone. The argument that other journalists are doing it doesn’t make it acceptable.

Several years ago, someone called to berate me for what he considered errors in my story. Rather than shout him down, I gave him the chance to offer his perspective. Eventually he calmed down and we had a measured, detailed discussion. This became the first of numerous conversations and interactions in which he provided important perspectives and shared details I might not otherwise have known.

Reporters face a public acutely aware of its own anger. Almost by definition in a country where the two major political parties struggle to find common ground, some group of readers disagrees with our coverage. We shouldn’t try to please everyone. In fact, we should try to please no one — we should merely work harder. It’s time to allow facts to speak for themselves.

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It’s become an Abbott and Costello comedy routine, except in the nation’s capital. Let’s take a look:

Trump: “Strange as it may seen, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names.”

Costello: “Funny names?”

Trump: “Nicknames, nicknames. Now, on the Washington team, we have who’s on first, what’s on second, I don’t know is on third.”

Costello: “That’s what I want to find out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the Washington team.”

Trump: “I’m telling you. Who’s on first, what’s on second, I don’t know is on third.”

Costello: “You know the fellows’ names?”

Trump: “Yes.”

Costello: “Well, who’s playing first?”

Trump: “Who was playing first, but I fired him.”

Costello: “You fired him? Who did you fire?”

Trump: “Yes. I most certainly did. It was time for a new first baseman. We’ve got a better one coming in to play first.”

Costello: “Oh yeah? Who is that?”

Trump: “No, who was on first.”

Costello: “What are you asking me for?”

Trump: “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Who was on first.”

Costello: “I’m asking you, who’s on first?”

Trump: “I already told you, not anymore.”

Costello: “Not anymore is on first?”

Trump: “Yes.”

Costello: “You won’t tell me the name of the fellow on first base?”

Trump: “Yes, not anymore.”

Costello: “OK, so not anymore is playing first?”

Trump: “He was, but he just left, too, so now I have no one.”

Costello: “You don’t have a first baseman?”

Trump: “Yes, I do, no one.”

Costello: “How can no one play first?”

Trump: “He’s very talented. He’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen at the position. He’ll win games for us.”

Costello: “When you pay the first baseman every month, who gets the money?”

Trump: “He did, but no one gets it now.”

Costello: “So, you’re not paying anyone?”

Trump: “No, we’re paying no one. Sometimes his wife comes down and collects his paycheck.”

Costello: “No one’s wife?”

Trump: “Yes. After all, the man earns it.”

Costello: “No one does?”

Trump: “Absolutely.”

Costello: “Washington has a good outfield?”

Trump: “Oh, it’s great again.”

Costello: “The left fielder’s name?”

Trump: “Why.”

Costello: “I don’t know, I just thought I’d ask.”

Trump: “I just thought I’d tell you.”

Costello: “Then tell me who’s playing left field?”

Trump: “No, who was playing first, but he was fired.”

Costello: “Stay out of the infield! The left fielder’s name?”

Trump: “Why.”

Costello: “Why?”

Trump: “I’m thinking of moving why to center field after he did such a great job in left.”

Costello: “Who did a great job in left field?”

Trump: “No, who only plays first and he’s not on the team anymore, so I don’t want to talk about him.”

Costello: “You got a pitcher.”

Trump: “Wouldn’t this be a fine team without a pitcher?”

Costello: “Tell me the pitcher’s name.”

Trump: “Tomorrow.”

Costello: “Why not now?”

Trump: “No, why is in left field. He never pitches, but he might play center field.”

Costello: “Now when the guy at bat bunts the ball against tomorrow — me being a good catcher — I want to throw the guy out at first base, so I pick up the ball and throw it to no one.”

Trump: “Now, that’s the first thing you’ve said right.”

Costello: “I don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

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I wanted Dustin Fowler to succeed next year. In case you missed it, he’s the kid who came up from the New York Yankees minor league baseball system who ran into a low wall at Chicago White Sox and hurt his knee, ending his season and, as it turns out, his Yankees career before it began.

Fowler was slated to lead off the second inning of his first major league game, but, instead, was carted from the field to receive emergency medical attention.

It’s somewhere between incredibly difficult and impossible to make the major leagues and yet Fowler was good enough to be on the field.

And then, like the real person Archibald “Moonlight” Graham, who was featured in the Kevin Costner movie “Field of Dreams,” Fowler got within inches of holding a bat and facing major league pitching, when the season ended for him.

Fowler hasn’t left baseball but, as of this week, he’s no longer on the team he imagined joining. In need of starting pitching for this stretch run from now until October, the Yankees traded him as a part of a package to get Sonny Gray from the Oakland A’s.

Now, I want the Yankees to win and Fowler was a chip the team could trade to get a talent who could pitch more than five innings, and who might win important games in October.

And yet when Fowler left the Chicago field, I’m sure I wasn’t the only fan who hoped to support him a second time if and when he got another opportunity — and the Yankees needed him.

He still may get his chance with Oakland. After all, if he was good enough before his injury, he may ride the same determination and skill on the long road back to the majors.

Over before it started, Fowler’s Yankee career will feel like an unopened or undelivered present, shipped somewhere else.

Fowler was our boy. He was drafted in the 18th round in 2013 and had worked his way up to the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders. In the statistics for his career, there is a “1” next to the number of games he played in 2017 with the Yankees, along with “zeros” all the way through every other column. No doubles, triples, home runs or runs batted in for this Yankee apparition.

This is the time of year when baseball general managers have to decide between the present and the future. What are they willing to give up in an uncertain future for a present that may be less of an unknown?

Will the A’s and now Yankees pitcher Gray be worth the price of sentiment if he wins important games down the stretch and into the playoffs?

Derek Jeter used to remain unflappable as teammates wandered on and off his team, often shrugging off questions while indicating he knew it was a business.

If that business does well, do we care that some kid who may or may not have amounted to much for our team is now playing for someone else after bouncing back from adversity?

Fowler will be the one who made it to the team, only to have a freak type of baseball interference prevent him from fulfilling his rise from Yankees prospect to Yankees player.

The A’s and their fans will now pick up the Fowler narrative, making him a part of their lore and history. No matter how things pan out, Yankee fans can wish him the best even as we wonder what that might have been as a part of the New York narrative.

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We worry about infections regularly. The last thing people want is a cold right before they go on a summer vacation, before they see a newborn, or before they are about to give a presentation half way around the world to a group of people who might approve their work for the next three years.

And, yet, there are some types of infections, or infectious behavior, that have the opposite effect, making us stronger, purging our system of toxins and giving us the extra energy to work harder, to be more patient with traffic around us and to smile when someone accidentally insults us.

Laughter fits that bill. TV producers certainly understand this when they add laugh tracks to their shows. It allows people to feel as if they are not alone, as they laugh with others they can’t see, even if they are alone in front of their TV.

A late family friend used to become so caught up in funny stories that his quick breaths and high-pitched squeals kept him from speaking. The tale, however, became irrelevant as his performance more than compensated for the lack of a narrative, allowing the rest of the room, particularly those who knew him well, to share his laughter.

I can still hear the laughter from my late aunt, whose giggles would often end with joyous tears.

I recently spent a few days with my brothers to celebrate summer birthdays. We sailed, ate well and hit baseballs on a hot, airless field at Gelinas Junior High School.

I stood in right field, as one brother pitched and the other sent bombs deep into the outfield. My sister-in-law patrolled near second base, scooping up grounders and acting as a relay.

My brother crushed a hard grounder directly at his wife. I immediately shouted, “Field it to the side. Move out of the way.”

My brothers started laughing, slowly at first, at advice that was so contrary to the suggestions I had made when I coached baseball and softball over the last decade.

“Yes,” I acknowledged, “but I don’t want her to get hurt. I’d rather she missed a ball that hit a rock or took a crazy bounce than have it slam into her.”

“Sure, sure,” they teased. “You really don’t know anything about this game, do you?”

Then, it occurred to me to go with it.

“Well,” I shrugged, “I’m actually trying a new technique.”

“Oh yeah?” they asked dubiously.

“Yes, I’m going to tell the kids, ‘Take your eyes off the ball and make sure you have absolutely no idea what to do with the ball when it comes to you.’”

After a few snickers, the four of us shared the kinds of things you’d never tell kids on a baseball field, which ramped up the laughter. Things such as “Yes, it is all your fault” and “No, you’re not that good at this sport.”

The laughter somehow  made the heat of the afternoon more bearable.

Later, my younger brother was in the middle of a salad when he offered something so uproariously funny that his lips could barely contain the food, even as he couldn’t possibly swallow. With great effort, he slowed his laughter and swallowed.

I’m not sure what was so funny, but I know the value of laughter. Yes, of course, one movie after another tells us about the power of love, which drives people to incredible achievements and affirms the value of our connections.

Along the way, however, laughter helps fill our tank, soothes the frustrations of the day and puts a broad infectious smile on our faces that can spread, like a beneficial virus, delivering feelings of goodwill that can cascade through a crowd.

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Before we race through August and land on September, I’d like to suggest that we stop and smell the roses, among many other scents of summer.

At the top of the list of smells, on an island where marine life is never far away, is the smell of the ocean. As we lounge on our soft towels, caressed by a gentle breeze, we can breathe in the reviving, sweet smell of salty seawater.

Go to any beach during a summer day and you’ll also find the odor of sunscreen filling the air, courtesy of those spray-on bottles that seem to miss their target and head for the nostrils of the nearest sunbather as often as they reach exposed skin. While you may not want to eat sunscreen in getting away from your office, the smell can help you appreciate your favorite season, as is the case for my wife.

When you’re driving around town, you might reach a stop light or stop sign adjacent to a freshly cut lawn. I’ve always connected that smell with baseball fields, primarily because people started trimming their lawns around the same time as I played my abbreviated baseball season. When I was younger, I had as many games on my schedule in a year as this next generation seems to play in a month.

The atmospheric conditions in this light-intensive time collaborate to liberate the smell of mouthwatering food. At night or on weekends, the smell of a cookout can often encourage us to make a U-turn back to the supermarket to pick up some burgers, hot dogs and chicken.

I can’t drive anywhere near The Good Steer in Lake Grove without my nose acting like a sensory GPS, taking me back to my childhood and the spectacular onion rings that filled my plate.

Stand near just about any bakery in town and you’ll often have the opportunity to enjoy the best form of marketing, as the scent of freshly baked breads and cakes drifts down the street, leading us by our noses to their glass-enclosed treats.

When we were younger, my mother used to get on a sailboat, unpack our pretzels, turkey sandwiches and cold waters, pick up her head as if an old friend had called to her from the middle of the Long Island Sound and proclaim, “Oh, smell.”

Now, I recognize that the world is filled with the kind of foul odors that can turn a subway ride into a trip to “Dante’s Inferno” and that a visit to a friend’s house can also bring the pungency of wet dog to our nostrils.

The heat and the humidity, after all, is an equal-opportunity odor elevator, bringing everything to our attention including an awareness that the guy in the car next to us had garlic at lunch or the woman in line at the deli fell into the marsh in the morning.

Still, I prefer to focus on the proverbial odor glass as being half-full, as did some of my friends, who shared their favorite summer scents.

One person’s favorite smell is that of rain after the first drops fall, while another enjoys honeysuckle and the smell of jasmine from her native Beirut. A third enjoys the scent of coconut with lime or pineapple, and a fourth sings the praises of pine trees, mushrooms and wildflowers that remind him of his youth.

When we breathe in deeply enough these moments of summer rain, honeysuckle, coconuts and wildflowers, we can slow down the treadmill of time.

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What would happen if it rained on our intransigent politicians in Washington?

Well, for starters, the Democrats would all vote “no.” They’re voting “no” on everything anyway, so the rain probably wouldn’t affect them.

While some Republicans like Sen. John McCain would immediately acknowledge the rain, others would call it a nonstory. When the GOP couldn’t discount the reality that people were getting wet, they would decide it was President Obama’s fault because he didn’t stop the rains when he had a chance. The Republicans would find some regulation, which they suggested Obama enacted, that allowed or encouraged the rain, and would immediately set about doing the important work of undoing that regulation.

Sure, Obama knew about rain in Washington when he was president, but he didn’t enact a single policy or procedure that could have prevented the wet stuff from ruining barbecues and costing people money. He ignored an important proposal many years ago to put a retractable dome over Washington that would have created jobs and saved people from getting wet.

The New York Times would blame President Trump, his administration, his family and the Russians, especially President Putin, because all are at fault for everything. They probably planned during their meetings last year to distract everyone from their collusion to cause it to rain just when everyone was getting ready for a picnic. The Times would find some damning email in which someone joked about the rain, or in which the word “rain” might have been a code word, and would remind everyone that rain is synonymous with “pain,” which the paper is feeling from this new administration.

Competing polls would begin as soon as the first drops fell. One poll, which the current administration and Republicans would ignore and discredit, would suggest that even Trump voters are frustrated by the rain and feel that Trump promised them it would never rain again, except at night when they were sleeping. They would be upset that the billionaire Man of the People didn’t protect them when they wanted to attend their daughter’s softball game or when they wanted to go on a company picnic to a site that had previously been off-limits during the Obama administration because it was a protected area where young birds and fish were breeding.

At the same time, another poll that the Democrats would ignore would indicate that Trump voters were thrilled that they didn’t have to spend money watering lawns that, thanks to the new and limited Environmental Protection Agency, they could spray with a wide range of cheaper, job-creating pesticides that may or may not harm some people and a few turtles. This poll would suggest that these voters would be thrilled if the rain continued strategically through 2020, when they would be even happier to vote again for Trump.

Trump might tweet about how sad the rain was for Democrats and might suggest that it would be raining even harder if Hillary Clinton was president. Trump might engage in a twitter war with Chelsea Clinton or Rosie O’Donnell.

CNN would cover the twitter war extensively and would then claim that the entire discussion was a distraction from the real issues, which they would cover in a small box in the corner of their webpage.

Stocks would continue to rise as investors bet that people would need to spend more money on umbrellas in the short term, and on new food for other picnics some time in the near future when the rain stopped.

When the skies cleared, everyone would take credit before heading to the beach, unless they lived in New Jersey and were thwarted by an
unpopular governor.

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