Banish any thoughts of being too busy to vote. This is not exercise we’re talking about here. I don’t want to hear your sorry excuses. Your boss, by law, has to give you time off to vote. Polls are open until 7:30 PM (in North Carolina). Don’t dilly dally. This is not something you can put off til tomorrow. Vote. It takes 1o freaking minutes to make a world of difference. In the time you take to gab by the water cooler, order a baby gift on etsy, drive to 7-Eleven for your Slurpee fix, or complain about the weather, you could have voted. Don’t take the newspaper to the loo today for your 10-minute potty break. Get in and out and use that time to vote instead. Today you can change the world. If you don’t vote, don’t come complaining to me.
I voted today.
We had a little family field trip to the polls. Bird helped me fill in the dots. Deal’s fine motor skills aren’t quite steady enough, and I want my vote to count so he just stood by and watched. We all left with “I voted.” stickers. Bird even took the Democratic cheat sheet to school to use as a bookmark. That’s my boy! Note that he also called Mac Daddy Fidel Castro last night for being a dictator when he told him to put his coat on to play football outside. Mac Daddy and I had explained umpteen times that we were voting today for state and Congressional seats, judges, and county commissioner. We tried in our best “I’m just a bill” vernacular to make sense of our system. We’re clearly ineffective if all this kid recalls is Castro.
Our neighborhood polling place is just a few blocks away. After we voted Mac Daddy took the boys to school, and I walked home with Lark. I prayed that he didn’t poop (again) because I had run out of bags. Along the way I encountered several neighbors making their way to the polls. We stopped and chatted, and even bantered a bit. We certainly don’t need to agree to be neighborly, but fist bumps are for fellow progressives only. Besides the briskness that dances its fingers along our spines this morning, there is an air of excitement. Anticipation. Pride. Hope.
In just ten minutes you can change the world.
Your vote, regardless what team you cast it for, counts. Your vote is your voice. Your conscience. Your values. Your right. Don’t disappoint those who fought to win us the right to vote. I’m talking to you, everyone-who-isn’t-a-white-man-and-doesn’t-know-what-it-is-to-be-disenfranchised. Oh, don’t open up a can of whoopass on me now for dissin’ the white man. There’s no hate here, but let’s do a quick reality check to see when that segment of the world’s population was truly oppressed. And by all means, all people should go out there and vote. What I mean is that when people are feeling downtrodden and abandoned, they lack the energy and hopefulness to vote. Women, in particular, have become apathetic and sluggish. Don’t fall into that abyss. Voting is but one rung on the ladder that built this nation.
Climb up and out one vote at a time.