As many (if not all) of you know, I spent the last year and a half of my life working on an animated show called Lil’ Bush. It was a great job - one that would probably still be going on if our subject matter weren’t heading out of office with a popularity rating roughly the same as chlamydia and scary clowns.

Our most popular character, by far, was the child version of Dick Cheney. Voiced by the show creator Donick Cary, Lil’ Cheney was an evil little bastard who spoke in a series of grumbles and barely-audible words.

Recently, while engaged in Project Try Not To Go Crazy In Unemployment By Reorganizing My Whole Apartment, I stumbled across this photo from the early 90s.

Yes, that’s the awkward, teen version of me to the right, and that’s the pre-V.P. version of Dick Cheney on the left. In between is my far-more-photogenic-than-either-of-us family.

I don’t remember much about the day (when my stepfather Sully got his Colonel pin presented by Dick himself) except that Dick was late, Dick blew in, pinned my stepdad, posed for a few photos and rushed out. I know he was an important guy, but, still. I felt gypp’d at the time.

Maybe if he spent a little more time with us, I wouldn’t have written him into a tryst with Barbara Bush in which they make love so forcefully he accidentally slips into her uterus.