Trump’s life is a children’s book

Years ago, I wrote a children’s book based on the true story of a lost shoe floating in the Colorado River. I titled it Little Chaco. All of twelve pages with a line or two per page, Little Chaco is an easy and fun read, containing all the magic I gained on my one-and-only river trip through the Grand Canyon.

It was 2009 and I had just shaved my head at Diane Kenney’s champagne-and-shave-your-head party, to support her journey through cancer treatment. We all donated our hair for wigs and drank champagne while comparing our naked skull shapes. (Diane looks fabulous with-or-without hair, by the way.)

That summer my husband was lucky to get a permit for a private trip in the Grand Canyon. Clint started putting together a group of river rats who could just up and leave their lives for three straight weeks. At the same time, Tai Jacober was working for Tom Bailey on the ranch that used to belong to my grandparents, just south of town. They were building a new house for the ranch manager and the last remaining structure from the Mt Sopris Hereford Ranch sat too close to the building envelope. It would have to be gone in order to obtain a C.O. from Garfield County.

Tai offered Clint the house right there on the jobsite, with the condition that we could move it on a day’s notice. So, that’s what we did. We hired Bill Bailey to pick up Nancy’s house (as it was always called on the Ranch) and move it down the road to Satank. Of course, the timing coincided with the river permit and so one of us would have to stay in town to oversee the house move, while the other would float down the Grand Canyon for 21 days. I‘ll give you one guess…

Yes, that’s why I have only done the second half of the Grand; walking in with friends to meet up with the rest of our group and float for about ten days. It turns out ten days was plenty of time for me to reach a Zen level of daily life on the river. In fact, the trip was so profound, I came home and wrote a children’s book about it.

There’s a children’s book by Ingersoll Lockwood that keeps resurfacing, just like Little Chaco stuck in a wave. Written in 1889, Travels and adventures of Little Baron Trump and his wonderful dog Bulger bears a striking resemblance to Trump’s life story. That’s right, Big Orange Baby himself, or BOB, for those of you listening at home.

The coincidence of this has been dissected over and over again on the internet, and there are rabbit holes galore talking about the possibilities of time travel, alternate universes, and just plain black magic. I say magic is real and we have to hold onto it for as long as possible— especially because our current society hangs by a thread, only as strong as our weakest link. Speaking of our weakest link, I’m inspired to write another children’s book.

Whadd’ya think of this storyline: as BOB sails through his waterworld neighborhood, bullying and robbing his friends and family, he ends up with nothing but dirt and dust bunnies in his pockets. He travels farther and farther away from home, trying to collect enough gold to buy his way into the lighthouse tower, where he imagines all the really rich guys live like ketchup kings. But every time he steals someone else’s gold, it turns to dust.

Finally, BOB arrives at the gates (made of pearl) and starts trying to talk his way in… when— poof! He suddenly disappears through a wormhole, sucking with him all the negativity and hate that follows him like a permeating odor. Just gone, as if through an open door on a plane in mid-air. Bye! Then the good villagers go back to navigating life on the river, with all its currents and eddies, even taking a break to picnic on the shore together now and then.

Because really, the story of life on this planet is that water moves through the canyon. The end.