reminisce
I think way back sometimes to the moment I first heard he was running for president. I laughed out loud, and rolled my eyes, and said, holy shit, they will let anyone run for president these days. Then it was like I went through stages in the following months. At first it was simply funny to me. Then it was like, wow, that is really happening. Then that changed to, omg that actually might happen. Somewhere in the middle it ceased being funny. Then it happened.
Thinking back again on another tangent, I believe I had kind of a naive impression of him more than an opinion based on any solid info. I didn't know very much about him. I like to look things up about favorite bands or musicians, actors, or authors. Important people. Real people I find interesting, or creative, or who had done great things. He lacks all of those things, so I knew only the basics about him. Like I knew he had a lot of money (that turns out he didn't earn), and a terrible show that didn't interest me even slightly. He and his family made the news a bit while they fumble fucked their way through their miserable lives.
I also have a very distant and vague memory of my father laughing at him when he saw him on the TV. Not in the way a person would spontaneously laugh over something funny. Laughing at how over the top ludicrous of a human being he was. The way someone would laugh at an inappropriate offensive joke, or if the person walking beside them stepped on a fresh dog turd.
Those are memories I have of him in my household from when I was quite young up until he swindled his way into politics. I would say that to me he was sort of a caricature of a human being that appeared on the TV screen from time to time. Once he was gone from the screen I never thought about him at all until next time he did something stupid enough to be on TV.
Instead of succumbing to the needs of his toxic narcissistic tendencies, he could have lived out the end of his failure of a life, shitting himself and mumbling nonsense in the shadows of some gaudy abandoned rundown skyscraper. The T fallen from the sign long ago. No one left in his life but maybe a flunky or two. Or better yet, he might have been incarcerated for the heinous crimes he has more than likely committed. In the end, his death would have been barely noticed. Would have been one of those, oh shit, I didn't even realize that guy was still alive! A front page sidebar headline for a day, at best. Maybe a brief story in the back pages about what a fucking piece of garbage he was. We can only dream of alternate timelines.