Repeatedly upon many times there were men named John. But once upon a single time there was a man named John who became the servant of another man named John who was getting ready for a long and dangerous journey. The second John had just joined a group of English outcasts in the Netherlands and was preparing for a long and dangerous journey. This particular long and dangerous journey was unprecedented and was timed to take advantage of a window of opportunity that a certain king name Jimmy was giving him and 100 of his best friends to avoid execution by fleeing to a far away land. They went by boat and encountered many storms on a huge, unfriendly ocean.

Once and only once during this trip a man was knocked overboard. It happened during an especially fearsome storm and, as you all know, storms are not good times for extranavicular activies. The man who took the plunge was the young servant John, about 20 years old at the time and yet to procreate. As he and all of his unduplicated DNA sank beneath the waves he managed to cling to a topsail halyard which hung overboard. Defying the howling winds and rough sea, his fellow sojourners pulled on his rope to bring him back to the surface and hauled him in with a boathook. To say that this pilgrim cheated death would be a gross understatement. As his body was pulled back onto the deck of the Mayflower, shivering as much from fear as from the ocean chill, I wonder if anyone understood the monumental significance of the twist of fate which had twisted that thin length of rope into the hands of young John at his moment of desperate need. Exact copies of portions of John's DNA, almost lost forever at the bottom of the sea, are entwined in the nucleii of every cell in the body of our sitting president.