Was there something about the carrot, as opposed to a radish, a cucumber, or zucchini? It could easily have been a tomato had it not been for the fact that, in a moment of panic, I picked up a carrot instead of a tomato. There were plenty of tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, celery (celery would have been impossible), squashes, bell peppers, beets, pearl onions, and many other leafy greens, too numerous to mention. This was the White House kitchen, for crying out loud.
What I am about to tell you is the real reason behind the carrot—I hope it will be crystal clear by the time I finish. The President was immersed in chaos—as he continues to be. President Amar Akbar Anthony, our first US President who identifies with multiple personalities, was dealing with “Poopgate” at the time. This is how it happened.
He had a toothache from hell. He had come to the Rose Garden, and as you recall, everyone fixated on a long streamer of toilet paper extending from beneath his pants and trailing on the lawn. It was not difficult to deduce that during a visit to the facilities, he had used an extraordinarily long length of toilet paper that he had subsequently forgotten to flush. This length remained moored to the Presidential Bottom, ran down the side of his leg, exited beneath his trouser hems, and then ran for another four feet or so. An immense length indeed. It is difficult to imagine how (or why) he tore off so many feet of toilet paper—and even harder to understand how it remained intact. Well, this was Presidential Toilet Paper, after all, and it is both unusually sturdy and eminently biodegradable. None of that flimsy disintegrate-in-your-hand kind of toilet paper for the Leader of the Free World.
To make matters worse, when the reporters asked him about the toilet paper, he lied about it and said that it was not toilet paper at all. To call it “toilet paper” was a lie, with a capital L, a poor attempt to create news where there was none. He expanded on this theme. People who said that they saw toilet paper emanating from beneath his trousers were unrepentant liars, he added. One of his aides rushed to tear off the toilet paper. The President explained that what they saw was the remnant of a paper airplane that Princess Deirdre had tossed upon the Rose Garden. Princess Deirdre was the then five-year-old royal great-great-great grandchild visiting the White House with her parents from the UK on a goodwill mission to save endangered swans.
Poopgate fed into the opposition’s narrative about the President’s mental fitness. How could the President handle the problems of America when he couldn’t even deal with toilet paper? His misguided attempt to lie was seen as pathetic by his political opponents, who claimed that the cover-up was worse (and stupider) than the crime.
This led to the inevitable detailed analysis of the tape of the infamous press conference and the innumerable close-ups of the Presidential Trouser Hems with the unmistakable Presidential Toilet Paper tracking out from under it and heading out upon the Rose Garden. There was even talk of using specialized advanced ultrasound technology to decently and respectfully visualize the toilet paper running along the President’s lower leg or up to the mid-thigh at most. “There is no need to go higher,” Speaker of the House Brad Meaney declared. Meaney, a staunch enemy of the President, didn’t want to breach Presidential Privacy, and he said that whatever happened above the mid-thighs was “a private Presidential concern. Nevertheless, we seek the truth of the matter, especially when the President has absurdly lied about Princess Deirdre and nonexistent paper airplanes. We have it on good authority that Princess Deirdre doesn’t even like paper planes after an unfortunate incident in the past with a paper plane that poked her in the eye.”
The President was in a mood, I can tell you that! I saw him raging at Sticks. Sticks was a damn fine chief of staff, possibly one of the best, and I was Sticks’s assistant, so I got to see the President up close and personal a lot, virtually every single day. All his personalities could get equally angry, I should add.
The toothache was to blame. He was advised by the PR doctors to go out and explain that, in truth, he had not lied. Instead, he had been in severe pain when he had (a) torn off approximately eight feet of toilet paper, (b) forgotten to flush it, (c) left the President Toilet with the toilet paper in situ, and then (d) made an innocent mistake in naturally assuming that the paper everyone saw was a paper airplane Princess Deirdre had played with. Everyone had seen Princess Deirdre jumping up and down in the Rose Garden, so was it such a stretch for the President to leap to the understandable conclusion about the paper plane? It was all the toothache, and the President, with his devotion to duty, had decided to do his job and brave through the pain. It was his love of service that had caused the toilet paper to remain adherent to the Presidential Bottom.
But the President disagreed. He insisted on doubling down on the lie. Poopgate was absurd, a travesty created by his enemies (and the enemies of the American People) to bring him down. The President, in a statement released to the press, said, “With so many urgent issues needing our immediate attention, my opponents are interested in nonexistent toilet paper.”
***
This is the background. It is possible—maybe even true—to think of me as a Russian spy. My name is Pyotr Simulov—which my father legally changed to Peter Smiley (my parents legally migrated to the US when I was six months old). I don’t speak a word of Russian, and I’m as American as apple strudel, but somehow I ended up with a KGB handler—it’s a long story. My grand plan was to approach the CIA, tell them everything, turn the tables on the KGB, and become a double agent, feeding false info to the KGB. I want to emphasize that this was my New Year’s resolution, and I hadn’t quite figured out how to trick the KGB just yet. So, in practical terms, I was planning on passing secrets to the KGB on a regular basis, but my heart was not in it.
Being an assistant to the chief of White House staff, Alex Sticks, meant that I had access to the best material, and I was obliged—forced—to pass the juiciest bits to the KGB, even though, being a patriot, I assure you that I held back as best as I could. My handler, Vasily, threatened me that I had to do as ordered, or I would find myself in the worst kinds of trouble or at the bottom of the Delaware River. Neither was an appealing prospect, and so I promised I would photograph some secret documents about some important treaty and give them to Vasily. “Good,” said Vasily, spitting out some tobacco. Disgusting habit. I involuntarily winced. Vasily saw me wince and spat out again to remind me of our relative positions in the hierarchy. Vasily had me by the cojones, and I had to play ball, no pun intended.
“Special sleeve,” he said, “for microchip with photograph of secret documents.” He inserted the microchip into the tiny sleeve. Then, without any warning, he shoved the microchip into my forearm. It hurt like hell. But because this darn thing was so thin, there was only a faint, thin streak of blood beneath the skin where the microchip had pierced it.
He then took a horseshoe-shaped object, a magnet about an inch by inch in size, and caressed my wounded skin with it. The microchip in the sleeve, like a badass splinter, was sucked out, causing me to gasp—first with pain and then with relief and then with a feeling that was both pain and relief rolled into an unpleasant bundle.
“Impossible to detect,” he said. “Best Russian technology. Take that, America!”
***
The President saw the Bollywood blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony in the ’80s and then kept watching it. The movie was about three brothers, separated from each other during infancy and each raised in a different faith: Amar as a Hindu, Akbar as a Muslim, and Anthony as a Christian. They all come together in a happy ending after much pain and suffering and unbelievable fight sequences. For him the movie was an eye-opener. Different religions, different cultures, different people, different everything could all live together—except for the Russians, who had to be defeated at all costs. It gave him his political philosophy. He saw the movie eight hundred or so times. He was so inspired that he decided to adopt three different personalities— deliberately, as a statement. It meant that on some days, the President was Amar, on others Akbar, and on others Anthony. Occasionally he would be all three and discuss the finer points of theology with himself. In short, these repeated film viewings turned Todd Layter into President Amar Akbar Anthony, our first US President who explicitly declared that he operated with multiple different personalities. I am excluding from this discussion all the Presidents who appeared as if they had multiple personalities—saying completely opposite things at different times and appearing to believe in them. But I digress.
***
Photographing the supersecret treaty documents was the easiest part of this whole business since W.H. Chief of Staff Sticks asked me to scan the documents and put them on a thumb drive.
Things at the White House are surprisingly laid back if you’re one of the folks who are supposed to be around, like me. If I’d wanted, I could have hidden in the Oval Office beneath the President’s desk and listened in on secret conversations. Not that I would have ever done anything like that because I have a problem with foot odor, and the President keeps uber-smelly slippers beneath the desk.
After scanning the documents onto the thumb drive, I reluctantly saved them on the microchip. I wasn’t scared of being caught. As I said, the whole place is very lax. Security? Forget about it! I was an assistant to Chief Alex Sticks, which meant I could scan top-secret documents and steal them for the Russians.
I was left with the microchip—with a sharp sleeve capable of being rammed into the flesh. But that wasn’t happening.
***
So now, if you’re with me, I had one microchip with a secret that could send me to prison for the rest of my life. I can’t explain why I didn’t simply pop it into my pocket before stepping out of the office. I intended to, to be sure, but the microchip was in my clenched fist when I bumped into the President in the hallway.
“Peter,” he said. “Shall we join hands?”
“Sorry, sir?” I began sweating profusely.
“We aren’t joining hands enough in the White House. Everyone is so professional, uptight, and mean. It’s stifling. We ought to love each other. In that life-affirming film, you know, my namesake, Amar Akbar Anthony, there was this scene—have you seen the film?”
“No, sir, it’s on my list.”
“Tsk-tsk,” said the President disapprovingly, resembling a dismayed moose. He’s a big man. “I’ve got to ask Alex to make it mandatory viewing.”
“Great idea, sir,” I said, my palms pouring out oodles of liquid sweat onto the clenched and now-drenched microchip.
“There’s this wonderful song in the movie sung by this fantastic singer, Rafi, about this stick-in-the-mud father who is standing between his daughter Salma and Akbar. Akbar loves Salma, Salma loves Akbar. FYI, I am Akbar right now.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, throat dry. The President had a habit of helpfully telegraphing which personality he had adopted at any given moment.
“The two love each other—it’s the truest, the purest love. And yet Dad, cruel, cruel Dad, won’t let his daughter marry Akbar. And Akbar has the noblest feelings for his daughter. But Dad is mean. Mean, mean, mean! Peter, too many people in the world are like Dad. But we change that today! You and I, my boy, are going to watch the film together. I’m sick of this Poopgate nonsense. What’s the big deal about some freaking toilet paper. It’s not like no one’s ever seen toilet paper before! I was in severe pain! I could’ve sworn I had flushed the bloody stuff down, so what if a few feet remained stuck? Big deal! But the meanness ends today! You and I, we enter this new dawn of love and kindness. We will watch Amar Akbar Anthony. We will begin by joining hands. So come on, man, palms open, let’s do it.”
If you’re stealing secrets from the White House and are hiding them in a microchip in your fist, the thing you absolutely can’t do is open your palm and show the President the microchip. The President was also a huge spy-movie fan. What would he see when I opened my palms to join hands with him? He would see the microchip. He would put it together in one second. And he would be on to me like dung beetles on dung. And my life would be over.
So, what could I do? The President, with a toothy, goofy smile, was standing before me, palms open, expecting me to open my fist, making strange nudging movements with his head, bulging his eyes encouragingly. I, on the other hand, could see my future ruined. So, what could I do? I did the only thing I could. I ran.
My move enraged him. He thundered, “PETER! What the hell do you think you’re doing? Come back here this instant! Don’t be ridiculous! I am the President! I’m ordering you to join hands with me!”
I kept running.
What do you think happened next?
The President overcame his initial shock at seeing a lowly employee disobey him and run away from him. This was like something from a movie, an unbelievable movie, the kind of movie he loved. And he knew just what to do. He ran after me. And when I say he ran, I mean he ran. Have I mentioned that he used to be on the track team during college? I don’t have the exact stats, but I’ve heard it said that he is the US President with the fastest running speed.
The President was gaining on me. I am a bit on the unhealthy side. I need to work out more. Of course, my poor physical condition didn’t help me. I was running out of breath, unlike the President, who appeared positively energized, making leopard-like strides down the halls and corridors. He shouted: “Don’t be like mean, cruel Dad! Let Salma marry Akbar! C’mon! We will join hands, watch Amar Akbar Anthony, and all will be forgotten and forgiven.”
I could’ve simply slipped the microchip into my pocket, stopped, turned around, joined hands, and watched the movie with him. But this simple thought didn’t occur to me. Maybe it was the panic. Instead I dashed into the kitchen, where, before me, were startled employees and an array of vegetables, including the aforementioned tomatoes, carrots, potatoes, celery, squashes, bell peppers, beets, pearl onions, and many other exotic greens and reds. I grabbed a carrot and, with a swift move, shoved the microchip into the carrot.
Moments—and I mean moments after I inserted the microchip into the carrot, the President was in the kitchen. The staff in the kitchen moved discreetly to the sides. I braced for the outburst.
To my surprise, he said:
“Anger is destructive. All religions teach us to overcome anger. I’m not angry. I understand. You were embarrassed, yes? Or shy? You felt too inadequate, maybe? You couldn’t believe you could join hands with the President and watch a movie with him. Isn’t that so?”
“Yes,” I said, “I just couldn’t believe it. I also forgot to apply deodorant this morning—I was rushing. I didn’t want to offend you.”
“Nonsense! If only you knew how many times I’ve forgotten to deodorize myself! But I’m not afraid of honest-to-goodness American sweat! Come, get over your silly hangups, and let us march boldly together, hands joined, and watch Amar Akbar Anthony. And is that a carrot in your pocket?”
“Yes sir, it is,” I said, remembering that I’d stuck it in my pocket, its pointy end sticking out of it.
“It wasn’t there earlier when we met in the hall before you ran,” said the President, eying me suspiciously.
“No sir, it wasn’t,” I stammered. “When I came here into the kitchen, I was overcome with the sight of this delicious carrot, and I decided to—to—to—to—er—pick it up, to eat it later.”
The President stared—no, glared at me.
“Hand me the carrot,” he said.
I nearly fainted with fear. Did he suspect me? How odd it must have looked to him. To dash into a kitchen, chased by him, and then, weirdly, grab a carrot and shove it into my pocket…from his point of view, I was either insane or a criminal—a spy! Was he onto me?
With moist palms I extracted the carrot from my pocket and handed it to him. He held it before him. He peered hard at it. Could he see the little nick where the microchip had gone in?
He rubbed his finger on the carrot. “Little defect here, on the surface,” he said.
My heart sank! He knew—he had to know. Had he spotted the nick where I had inserted the microchip?
He pursed his lips reflectively. His eyebrows came together. He sniffed the carrot, holding it an inch from his nose. He then held it even closer to his eyes.
I hyperventilated.
And then he said: “It’s a good-lookin’ carrot.”
“Yes, sir, it is the best.”
“Bugs Bunny would’ve loved it! I’ve got it! It’s a stroke of genius, Peter! A brainwave! I owe it to you, my friend, to your embarrassment! Do you know what I’m thinking?”
“No, sir, I can’t say that I do,” I replied, feeling tired, spent with all the emotion.
“America loves Bugs Bunny, and therefore America loves a good carrot. Good wholesome vegetable. This is a good—no, a great carrot. I’ve never seen one so close. It’s magnificent. I am having a mindful moment with this juicy, remarkable carrot. This is the answer to Poopgate.”
“The carrot?” I asked, puzzled.
“Yes, Peter, most definitely the carrot! As a nation we disagree on so many things. We are divided. But we can all agree on vegetables, can’t we? I mean, they’re good for you.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure where he was going.
“Whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or whatever, a carrot is a carrot. A carrot is the ultimate uniter. What our nation needs is to be reminded about the wholesome stuff in life. Like a good carrot. Not this stupid Poopgate! I’m going to have this carrot framed.”
“What?” I cried out. An image of Vasily—infuriated, enraged, murderous Vasily— popped into my mind’s eye.
“Yes, Peter, I have a very keen mind for possibilities. This is why, modesty aside, I’m such a terrific politician. I hereby announce that this carrot—or any generic carrot—is going to be the First Vegetable.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t follow…”
“Oh, you’re a bit slow, Peter, aren’t you? You have the First Spouse and you have the First Pet, the First Dog, the First Anaconda, and so forth, so why not the First Vegetable? Why not the First Carrot?”
***
Why not, indeed? And this is the secret history behind the First Vegetable, the First Carrot, President A.A. Anthony’s brainchild. He used it to distract attention from Poopgate. People sneered at him at first, but then nutritionists and health professionals latched onto the idea of the First Vegetable. That’s exactly what America needed. A First Vegetable. We, as Americans, could come together on vegetables. Vegetables were a nonpartisan issue. And the carrot was a superb vegetable, a worthy First Vegetable. And so the tide began to turn. Poopgate receded into the rearview mirror to make way for other crises.
I still had Vasily to think of. I would have to placate him with the promise of even more top-secret documents and get new microchips from him. Which meant that I needed more carrots. I grabbed two from the tray in the kitchen and put them in my pocket. And then I joined hands with the President before heading to watch Amar Akbar Anthony. A fun film, by the way. Very enjoyable.
THE END
Hafeez Diwan is a Professor of Pathology and Dermatology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX. He is the author of the mystery novel The Impossible Murder of Headless in Houston, the young adult fantasy novel The Great Lion Escape (with Sara Diwan), How to Love Obnoxious People—and Why? and How to Have Instant Willpower Right Away.
Euphony Journal 