CAUCASIAN REPRODUCTIVE HAZARDS (C)1994 Alan M. Schwartz Each evening my beloved and I delight in the many pleasures to be had from within the enchanted bower of a 42 square foot, old- fashioned waterbed. Nearly a ton of warm water disinfected with a double dose of Blue Magic is held within a giant vinyl bladder, itself contained within massive pine planks bound by stout steel fittings, the whole lofted a foot into the air by a particle board lattice cloistered beneath three robust plywood sheets. My bed was first assembled in October 1977. It has been moved to seven different locations in the intervening seventeen years, never but faithfully underpinning the placid languor of deep sleep and the prodigious energies of heterosexual abandon. You can imagine our shock and amazement when our sheets exploded. As a bachelor I had periodically acquiesced to the necessity of peeling the waterbed sheets off the mattress pad, prying that loose, forcing everything into a bright orange heavy gauge polyethylene radwaste bag and sneaking away to an out-of- neighborhood laundromat. About $2.25 later the stiff, slick parchments were again rendered cloth-like and pliable, and ready after drying for another nocturnal three month shift. My sweetie used unconventional cleansing rituals - the calamity of bleach sadistically enforced each week - which shortened a nominal mean time to sheet failure from 30 years to my accumulated tenure plus one month. One evening we rolled into bed expecting the gentle embrace of warm, taut fabric. As we approached a biologically meaningful intersection, the sheets exploded into shreds. How lucky we are that the President's Wife's Council on Caucasian Reproductive Hazards was eagerly awaiting just such a tragedy. Every American possesses a Divine Right to utter protection from all forms of personal responsibility. Each true American will be devastated by the smallest misfortune, thereafter requiring intensive counseling to blunt the upsets of post traumatic stress syndrome and its crushing sequelae of uncontrollable substance abuse and personal ruin that will follow, by law. As the massive Northridge earthquake in Southern California spawned a multi- billion dollar hand-holding and insurance fraud industry, so our exploded sheets were confiscated as evidence by a Special Federal Prosecutor pending emergency Federal legislation. Hillary Ramrod Clinton was set to impose her will, and no cabal of moneyed special interests (re flotation mattresses) was poised to encumber what she knew was best for her citizen-victims. A special Presidential Decree went out that afternoon. Under pain of arrest, fine and prolonged imprisonment (this was a Federal regulatory action - the annoyance of due process of law was inapplicable), sociopathological waterbed junkies must now: A) Attend a Federally mandated twenty hour video instruction course on proper waterbed use, maintenance, hazards and emergency recovery procedures followed by a graded nine hour examination. B) Only purchase and possess waterbed-related paraphernalia bearing explicit printed safety warnings etched in bold type of a minimum specified typeface height and width on all visible sides. C) Wear Federally mandated safety equipment including but not limited to ankle braces; knee, elbow and shoulder pads; safety helmets with shatterproof visors and Kevlar webbing chin straps; and a lumbar support. Legislation to make the omission of wearing such a felony punishable by heavy fines is assured of swift passage through the Banking Committee. D) All waterbeds must be retrofitted with circumferential airbags to prevent user ejection during wave resonant reciprocating locomotion. Said airbags must be certified safe and operative every two years with the granting of a State compliance certificate for a nominal fee. Said inspections will be franchised under matching Federal grants to otherwise unemployable OG homeboy members of Inner City gangs. E) A 10,000% tax will be immediately levied on all California King purchases - present, future and past. A waterbed that large can only be used for purposes of lust, rape and female degradation. Gays, Lesbians, People of Color and Gennifer Flowers will be granted special permission and Federal subsidies for ownership because they would not participate in such nasties except involuntarily as victims of Eurocentric ethnic atrocities perpetrated by their historical oppressors. A bright, new future awaits us in which the sordid waterbed tragedies of yesteryear will be but fleeting catastrophes expertly counseled into our subconscious. A robust economic recovery for the entire country through massive job creation is assured, even though we now officially enjoy the statistically best economic climate ever recorded in American history. How selfish and self-destructive can a coterie of waterbed perverts be to reject the paternal caresses of their Federal father, and at such a truly insignificant price given the eternal vigilance warrant assigned to the BATF?