Cowboy polo is physically demanding to both horse and rider, we were nearing the end of another evening practice and Bobby was a big hitter. I positioned my horse cross-ways about 30 feet down the polo arena so as to best block his free shot from the end zone. Taking a full swing with his mallet, Bobby exploded the 13 inch red rubber playground ball out of the dirt, sending it flying it across my saddle horn. I reflexively tossed up my rein hand and the ball ricocheted off my fist as a sharp pain shocked up my arm from my ring finger. I glanced at my rein hand to see the backside of three fingers, but the palm side of my ring finger. “This isn’t good,” I thought as I quickly twisted my ring finger back around so it matched the others.

My practice was over, so I loaded my horses in the trailer and drove to my clinic so I could snap an x-ray. Sure enough, the first phalanx on my left ring finger (the bone where your wedding ring should sit if you are married) was fractured in three pieces. With my little and middle fingers serving as a splint, I taped the three together and headed home. Such is the only fringe benefit to being a veterinarian; you rarely waste a night waiting to see a doctor in the emergency room.

Scanning the appointment book the next morning, I spotted a problem. I had previously scheduled a farm call to preg-check 20 cows, but now my testing hand was taped together because it had a broken sending unit. In vet school, we trained our non-dominant hand to perform rectal palpations, so our dominant hand was free to perform fine manipulations such as writing or zipping our pants. “I’ll just preg-check with my right hand,” I thought as I drove to the farm. “Since both hands feed information into my brain, how difficult could this be?” After 15 years of practice the fingers of my left hand could detect structures as thin as a dime through the wall of a cow’s rectum. However, the fingers of my right hand told my brain all it could feel was warm cow manure. Everything was so confusing and this poetically brings me to my political point.

Patriots typically study political news as if their freedom depends on it, because it does. If you understand the contradictory relationship between free-bees and freedom, you knew which candidates earned your vote months ago. Today’s deluge of negative political ads is not directed at you, it is targeted at the one or two percent of undecided voters. Your mind is simply the collateral damage of a political war. Imagine how confusing it must be for this one or two percent to cast a ballot based entirely on television, radio, or direct mail ads. It is like me trying to preg-check a cow with my right arm; my hand may be warm, soft and moist, but it has no clue what it is doing. Isn’t it frightening to think the fate of American liberty is about to be decided by the undecided.