South Korea asks Trump to ease sanctions on the regime that just promised it an 'incurable headache'

…(cont) So I went looking, the way I do, and found the page underneath it. Ten days earlier — September twelfth — that same government fired ballistic missiles into the water. The report I've got says they did it the day after the Americans, the South Koreans, and the Japanese finished up a joint military drill together. And the government that fired the missiles called that drill itself a threat. Their word, not mine. So here's the order I've got written down: the drill happens, they call the drill a threat, they fire missiles over it, and ten days later, they test the weapon that promises the thing from my first page. Is that the order you've got it in too?

Here's what I keep going out to the garage over. My car's needed a fan belt since June — I know, don't tell me — and with the hood up, I think about how a fan belt works. Something rubs against something else and wears it thin, and you don't wait for the part to seize before you deal with it. You don't call the parts counter and ask them to go easy on the price while the belt is fraying in your hand right then. You ask why it's still fraying.

So I go back to my page. Same day as the weapon test, the president of South Korea is on the record asking President Trump to ease sanctions on that same government. Not eliminate the weapons program. Freeze it, the article says. Ease the sanctions, freeze the program. I wrote that down too, right underneath the word from the first page, and I sat in the driveway looking at the two lines in my own handwriting, not knowing what to do with them. So I did what I do. Nothing. Drove around with it folded in my coat.

My wife says I'll wear that page to lint before I throw it out. I had it with me again at the bank line yesterday, reading it a fourth time, and the fella behind me asked what I was so stuck on. I told him I'd let him know when I worked it out.

Hold on — before you go, one more thing, because I nearly let it go without asking. Same page, both dates on it: the promise from ten days before, and the sanctions request from the very same day it landed. I keep asking myself how those two dates line up. What I've got here says the request landed the same day as the weapon test, and both of those landed after the drill got called a threat, after the missiles went into the water, ten days earlier. Is that the order that makes sense to you, or is that just the order it happened in — the ask, landing the same day as the headache?