Val Goes to the Ends of the Earth to Cast Her Vote

I just drove back from voting a couple hours ago, and boy is my carpal tunnel tired. But seriously...

It is difficult for me to vote in the early morning hours before work, because my polling place is in the opposite direction from my job. Ninth-graders wait for no woman, so it wouldn't do for me to be late because I got tied up in the voting booth. Not literally tied up. I'm sure that would count as some untoward type of kinky voter intimidation. Please excuse me for taking liberties with the word "booth". It is more like a flip-down diaper-changing table at my polling place. No sides to speak of. You're airing out your stinky baby's butt of a ballot for all inappropriate gawkers to see.

I vote in a little country church. I don't know the denomination, or any of the parishioners. It's an old rock building. Voting is in the basement, where smells of phantom church socials linger. Oops! That's the aroma of today's cooking for the old ladies manning the voter rolls. The rustic chapel resides six miles outside town. I don't know how many people are expected to Garmin their way to the middle of nowhere to vote. But an old-fashioned revival could not have filled that church to the gills like this election. The Pony and I had to stable the Tahoe in overflow parking. That's a side lot, almost gravel, on the upper end of the churchyard.

Hopefully, all voters were able-bodied. Because upon entering, one must hike down four uneven carpeted steps. A long table of mature women sit behind the voter registration books. I'm not sure if it's required by law, but everybody always hands over a driver's license to the book biddies. They page through the tomes of A-F, and G-L, and so on, depending on your last name. I was pleased to see that Hick had a big yellow sticker covering his name, with the legend ABSENTEE BALLOT over his sign-in space. That's because Hick voted Saturday, and is now cooling his steel-toed heels in Leominster, Massachusetts, on a workation from his job. No voter fraud here in Backroads.

After signing in with a red pen, I was shuffled along the table to another eldster who handed me a ballot. That's it. No instructions. She might as well have shoved a baby bird from the nest to fly or die. In past years, we've had an electronic machine or two. Not this time. But we had a lot of round tables, suitable for a poker tournament. Or perhaps not, depending on the religious affiliation of the churchmembers.

I wove my way through the close-proximitied tables, to one with just a man and his grandson. The seven-or-so-year-old occasionally asked Grampy a question. "Do you have to pay to vote? Is it true that if So-And-So is elected, he will make school three hours a day? That's what I heard at school." Most people sat at the tables. Only a couple used one of the three baby-changers. It was hard work filling in the ovals with a BIC black pen.

The after-work rush started as I was finishing. A lady plopped at my table, blocking my way out of the voter's maze. I looked like Ms. PacMan trying to find an alternate route. I resisted making that dying sound when a strapping eighteen-year-old first-time voter refused to yield to me at the narrow escape slot. Kids these days. They don't realize that the elderly have the right-of-way.

The fellow elderly, though, know where it's at. A gentleman motioned for me to go ahead of him at the ballot-eater. The shredder-looking machine that you feed your own ballot into. I was skeptical. I couldn't take time to read the directions with people lining up behind me. Besides, they might have been looking at my ballot. I was not going to be the one charged with inciting a rumpus in a church basement. No sirree Bob! That machine sucked my ballot in like an early-elementary child slurps a spaghetti noodle.

Mission accomplished.