If Henry VIII Had Been Running For President, He'd Still Be Married To Catherine Of Aragon

I'm not one of those people who think Daylight Savings Time should be a 12 month a year kind of thing, but Scooter it seems is one of those cats. Instead of waking me up at the fairly civilized hour of 7:18 AM, he's now hopping on the bed in full purr mode at 6:18 AM.

I have a rule that I don't get out of bed before 7:00 unless something really interesting is going on, and Scooter usually falls back asleep after a few minutes of adoration. So lately, I've had a lot of time to think.

Naturally, the past couple of days, I've been thinking about the election and how Nate Silver and I knew Mitt Romney was going to lose. Mr. Silver focused on poll results, and I on sperm results.

In the past 50 years, there have been 10 presidents of the United States. All 10 had daughters. Indeed, 5 out of the 10 had nothing but daughters.

Mr. Romney, with his 5 sons, was doomed to defeat.*

Since realizing that took about 1 minute, I still had a lot of time to kill before getting out of bed. So then I thought about how  Miranda in Life As We Knew It has two brothers because if I'd given her a sister, the book would have had a whole other dynamic that I didn't want to deal with. Then I thought about how  Evvie At Sixteen (which you'll see is available for purchase down aways on the right side of this blog) is about four sisters. Or how The Year Without Michael (over to the right) has a sister/brother/sister family, only Michael's the brother and there's a year without him. Even in The Ring Of Truth (lookit to your right), there's a sister and a brother, only I don't think the brother gets any lines.

After I whipped my way through my contributions to literature, I started making lists of Great Literary Only Children:

David Copperfield
Oliver Twist
Huckleberry Finn
Jane Eyre
Pollyanna
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
Anne Of Green Gables
Dorothy Gale
Nancy Drew
Archie, Veronica, Betty, Reggie and Jughead
Spiderman
Little Lulu.

Actually, I'm listing some of those by memory (or lack thereof). Maybe Betty did have a brother or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm a kid sister. If I'm wrong, I'm sure you'll correct me (in public and causing me maximum amount of embarrassment).

Of course many famous children of literature had other famous children of literature in their families. Every Little Pepper had four other Little Peppers to hang out with, and Flossie Bobbsey (the best name in children's lit ever) had Bert and Nan and Freddie to share twinhood experiences with. Alice In Wonderland had a sister, who sadly doesn't seem to have a first name, but has more lines of dialogue than the brother in The Ring Of Truth as compensation. And Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy had each other until Beth died. Maybe they got to see the Little Peppers and Little Lulu and Laura, Mary and Grace Pearl Ingalls at Little Family reunions.

As you can see, life will be a lot easier once Scooter accepts that Eastern Standard is here to stay!

*Any Republican reading this doesn't have to worry about 2016. Chris Christie, Mario Rubio and Paul Ryan all have daughters (or sons with very strange names).