This Actually Took Longer To Write Than the Time It Took Me To Vote

Two years ago, when I voted in the November election, it rained. Two years before that, when I voted in the November election, it rained. This evening, when I voted in the November election, it rained. Guess who's taking an umbrella to the polls in November 2016.

Despite leaving school by 3:45, the skies grew dark and headlights came on. Val is no fan of driving on twisting two-lane blacktop in the dark and the wet. But she did it, of course. Because that's her civic duty. It buys her a ticket to complain for two years. Or gloat.

Many of my teacher lunch table cronies were early voters. Fie on those folks whose polling place is on the way to work! Mine is in the opposite direction. So I wait until the workday is done, lest there be a delay. My voting buddies reported a glitch in the school town election hall. The ballot scanner was not working. Allegedly...it gave a message something like, "You have already voted." Which seems kind of impossible, because mine was working this evening, and it even said, "Thank you for voting." Not that it recognized me or anything. Nor did theirs have any idea who voted. Maybe they were stuffing that scanner too fast, like the father and son and son ahead of me who didn't wait for the green light, and the scanner choked a bit, unable to swallow, until the older son did a bit of a Heimlich maneuver and pulled the ballot back from the clinched maw of the scanner, explaining to his little bro, "You didn't wait until Dad's was in. You have to let the green light come on."

Hick said the scanner at our place was also on the fritz this morning. He went by there after leaving for work at 6:00. He does not have a classroom full of antsy adolescents waiting for him unattended if he is late for work. I made sure to tell Hick how to vote. Normally, I don't bother. He has a mind of his own, and sometimes we simply cancel each other out. Not that he'd tell me. He learned his lesson after confessing to the Ross Perot debacle.

Anyhoo...I had to tell him to vote NO on the education issue and YES on the child molesters and also YES for 9-1-1. Not that the education issue will affect me, because, ahem, I will be retired before it will take effect. The child molester issue is a vote on whether an accused molester's previous record of convictions for child molesting can be revealed to the jury. The consensus at the lunch table was that this is too good for child molesters, the idea being that a better plan would be requiring them to be turned loose in prison to serve their time with the "general public" as one teacher put it. Upon further inquiry, she stated that yes, she DID mean the "general population." Gotta recommend that TV show "Lockup" for her next time. The 9-1-1 issue puts the funding for our county system in a 3/8 cent sales tax, rather than having only the landline subscribers pay for it as a tax on their phone bill.

Hick did not think the child molesters should have to reveal their previous convictions. He thinks the alleged criminal should have a right to be tried only on the merits of his current case. Whatever...you're not going to get a tableful of teachers who devote their lives to protecting kids to agree to that.

So...climbing down off my soapbox...let's go to church. The church where I voted. Chapel, to be exact, as that is its name: Val's Voting Chapel. Almost. I can't reveal its real name, as it might be swamped with looky-loos who want a glimpse of Val's haunts and hang-outs. And speaking of haunts...that was one spooky spectre this evening.

It was a dark and stormy night. Nowhere, a dog barked. The blacktop parking lot of Voter Chapel was full. A big dually truck was trying to back out of a space. An SUV was parked all cattywompus at the entrance, and six cars sat along the retaining wall where they would have to back out blindly onto the blacktop at the risk of cars flying over the hill to pulverize them. I went on past to the gravel lot.

That parking lot used to be gravel. Now it is laced with moss and dead leaves. It's not even a regular shape. No square or rectangle or circle. Just a blob where cars can arrange themselves any which way. Three sat there under the big hickory tree. I knew it was a hickory, because even though the leaves had been rained off, some hickory nuts still clung. Then there were the fallen nuts (heh, heh, I said fallen nuts) that I trod upon as I made my way across the moss to the sidewalk in order to go around the front to the side door and the basement voting area. The dark church loomed above me, its stained-glass windows with their pointy arches mere pastels of what they must be when the light shines out. Darkness had settled in, the woods loomed menacingly along the back of the property, past an unkempt wooden shed of unknown purpose. If not for the multitude of perhaps 35 voters, it would have been an eerie setting.

I lumbered down the carpeted stairs to the church basement and confronted the local election volunteers. That's how it seemed. Like my presence was an intrusion. One guy had just gone down the line, many were marking ballots at tables better suited for pot luck dinners, and the white haired hens were cackling to beat the band. The one at my end of the table, behind the book for OOPS, almost gave away my last initial, which, of course is "T" for Thevictorian, finally turned to look at me. Not in a friendly way. I thought it was going to be a staredown. I wanted to tell her, "Sister, you think you know, but you have NO IDEA what I go through in a typical workday, and I could stare you down until the cows come home." Instead, I spoke first, in order to speed things along, and get back to The Pony sitting in T-Hoe on the undressed set of a real live horror movie.

"Do you need to see my ID?"

"Yes."

"Do I need to take it out?"

"No. Not as long as I can see the picture."

Talk about a horror movie. I withdrew my drivers' license that nobody seems to find the least bit flattering. Thank goodness nobody keeled over when viewing my flat plastic countenance. I signed the book and was shuffled down the pushed-together tables, walking the gauntlet to get a ballot. Other cackling hens stopped when they were darn well ready in order to service my voting needs. One handed me a ballot. Another took the cap off a Bic pen, as if I would abscond with it if given the chance, requiring them all to give chase. It would have been slower than George on a Rascal pursued by senior citizens on other Rascals.

The rest is history. I voted. My ballot was sucked into the scanner. I gave back my pen and snagged an "I Voted" sticker. The Pony had not been attacked, and no bloody hooks were found hanging from the door handles when we got home.

I appreciate the suffering that came before me in order to allow me my suffrage.