Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Poll Position
I had to do election monitoring for work yesterday. This meant that I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning (well before Lifetime switches from infomercials to '90s sitcoms, thank you very much) and drive out to Berwyn to be at a polling place when it opened. I found out that there are actually people who are very energetic at this time of day; these people need to be rounded up and incarcerated somewhere for their own protection. Suffice it to say that I don't need to be hugged by a handsome woman in a pink Garfield sweatshirt before I've had my morning caffeine.
Most of the day then was spent driving from precinct to precinct checking in to see if there were any problems. Actually, I very quickly learned not to directly ask if there were any problems, for that would open the floodgates to a range of non-electoral issues from a desire for pizza to discomfort from bunions. Instead I asked how things were going, which seemed to elicit a narrower range of issues that I might actually know something about, or at least be able to look up in my little guidebook. It had a table of contents and everything.
The highlights of the day were innumerable. But they had to include when we took our lunch break at the nearby mall and I realized that it featured no fewer than three Foot Lockers. Also when I became so tired midafternoon that I accidentally just helped myself to a left turn on a red light. There was also the man who tried to sell us a cheesecake outside a polling place (I seriously considered it) and the election worker who looked like a downmarket Diane Lane.
This, I believe, is what they call democracy in action.
I had to do election monitoring for work yesterday. This meant that I had to get up at 4:30 in the morning (well before Lifetime switches from infomercials to '90s sitcoms, thank you very much) and drive out to Berwyn to be at a polling place when it opened. I found out that there are actually people who are very energetic at this time of day; these people need to be rounded up and incarcerated somewhere for their own protection. Suffice it to say that I don't need to be hugged by a handsome woman in a pink Garfield sweatshirt before I've had my morning caffeine.
Most of the day then was spent driving from precinct to precinct checking in to see if there were any problems. Actually, I very quickly learned not to directly ask if there were any problems, for that would open the floodgates to a range of non-electoral issues from a desire for pizza to discomfort from bunions. Instead I asked how things were going, which seemed to elicit a narrower range of issues that I might actually know something about, or at least be able to look up in my little guidebook. It had a table of contents and everything.
The highlights of the day were innumerable. But they had to include when we took our lunch break at the nearby mall and I realized that it featured no fewer than three Foot Lockers. Also when I became so tired midafternoon that I accidentally just helped myself to a left turn on a red light. There was also the man who tried to sell us a cheesecake outside a polling place (I seriously considered it) and the election worker who looked like a downmarket Diane Lane.
This, I believe, is what they call democracy in action.
