Sh*t Show from the Get Go

It’s November 1, 2016. One week until election day…when our nation determines who will be the next president of the United States. My daughter called me from college as I got ready to go to kickboxing (Tuesday is my typical day off from my main job…I am a consultant for others so still work on that so-called “day off.” However, I also try to “work out” on those days. One must offset the increase of wine drinking and carbs consumption associated with these past few months of stress).

Anyway, as any normal mom would do when her child (who, like all of her peers, seems to have forgotten that a cell phone actually transmits voice and instead utilizes it primarily as a camera and texting device) calls, I somewhat panicked when I heard the phone ring and saw her image appear while applying makeup that’s not supposed to look like I’m actually wearing any while working out.

“What’s wrong??” is what I started to say, but fortunately morphed into the seemingly casual, “What’s up? Everything okay?”

Yes, she assured me. She wanted to talk about coming home to vote. We had discussed that she could come back to early vote with me after her classes on Friday. She now had a conflict.

However, she had learned she could vote on campus since she was already registered, etc. In fact, she was on the shuttle and nearing the location where she could do this. I told her to find out, let me know, and if successful, I would also go ahead and early vote as well.

A little while later, I received a picture of her with an “I voted early” sticker via text with the message stating, “Nasty women get shit done.”

Mama has done her job.

Admittedly, this election cycle has taken its toll on me. Now that I was no longer waiting for my daughter to vote in her first presidential election, I decided to go ahead and vote early today, too, in an effort to make myself feel a wee bit better. I’ve been told it helps the tortured psyche. When I arrived at the early voting location I had discovered during the primaries, I felt like I was running the gauntlet. Though I did not have a measuring tape, I am fairly certain some folks working the polling places for Republican candidates were in violation of NC state electioneering laws.

I blew past them still in partial kickboxing mode, was pleasantly greeted, and although I had to spell my last name 5 times (it is rather unusual), was taken to my voting machine station in short order. I was ready to get this shit done.

To my dismay, the very first vote I tried to cast (for President & Vice President, mind you) registered incorrectly. I attempted a few times to press/check the other option (obviously the HILLARY option), and it wouldn’t change. I finally had to press the box for Trump to get it to “uncheck” and then checked the HRC option. After thoroughly reviewing my ballot before officially submitting it, I immediately sought out someone to tell and was directed to the precinct chief or whatever her title was — at this point I was upset. I had barely held myself back from screaming, “Crooked Hillary rigged the election, my ass!”) and voiced my concerns. I showed her which machine (a machine on which someone was already voting), and she assured me that machine and all the other machines would be re-calibrated. So much for feeling a lot better…

I told her she would know which machine it was because someone had left their cheat sheet (a copy of the ballot with notes to help them during the process) tucked into one of the flaps. She gasped. That’s not supposed to happen. Yeah, well, it did. And did I mention I pressed the button for the Democratic nominees, and it selected the Republicans?

I forgot to mention that all of this occurred after I thought I might have lost my wallet.

As you will recall, I said today was November 1, 2016. This means Halloween was yesterday. I live in a great neighborhood with a lot of kids. As my one and only aforementioned kid is 19 and away at college, I miss this stuff. I love giving out candy and seeing the children. I love the unbridled exuberance and pureness in their desire to follow these absurd rules of dressing up to beg for candy from strangers. But I digress…

During the evening, one child approached me and my bowl of candy. Her parents remained on the front sidewalk. I let her pick a few pieces of candy. And then I looked up to really see her parents. They both had plain white t-shirts on. Written in simple black paint or marker, Dad’s said, “Bad Hombre” and Mom’s said, “Nasty Woman.” I said to the little girl, “I love your costume, but your mom and dad’s are really great.” She then asked me if I recognized the little box she was carrying. I did. It was the UNICEF box. I ran inside to grab my wallet because while I knew I didn’t have any dollars, I knew I had change.

The night went on. I gave out all of our candy, I blew out the candles on the jack o’lantern, gathered up all of the bits and pieces of things that had made their way outside and retired to watch shows on my DVR until bedtime.

Well, I live in NC. There has been quite the hullabaloo about HB2 and voter IDs as of late. When I left kickboxing earlier in the day, I wanted to go straight to vote. I dug around my purse and didn’t feel my wallet.

OH. MY. GOD. Remember the panic I described when my college daughter called in the middle of the day. Yes, that plus something else made me want to throw up. I wasn’t even as concerned about the potential of my credit card and debit card being compromised as my driver’s license being gone.
What if I couldn’t vote? There would be absolutely no way for me to get a new ID in time. This could not be happening.

Alas, I found the wallet just inside the front door on the hall tree. I cried. Happy tears. I thanked God about 17 times, and then my mom and dad, because I figured they might have had something to do with it, too. That’s totally something they’d be involved with in the afterlife. Helping people vote. I was supposed to be John Robert after the Kennedys…I just happened to be born a girl instead.

So obviously, I did vote (they didn’t ask for my ID after all), and my afternoon went on.

Fast forward to dinner. I had gone to the grocery store and had about 4 different dinner options, but my husband wanted to go out and “relax.” Fine. He suggested a place where they have ½ price bottles of wine on Mondays and Tuesdays and a salad that regularly appears in my dreams. And bread (remember, I need carbs these days).

We usually sit at the bar when possible. Without a kid, we fit in with all the divorcees and widowers pretty well, not to mention the bartender is awesome. She is sincerely happy to see us when we come in (listen, I’ll take it where I can).

We found two seats…literally on the corner of the bar. I was on one side; he on the other. As soon as I sat down, I noticed two women sitting next to my husband, looking at and whispering about the woman now next to me. She was a rather slight woman with a clean face, a short ponytail and an over-sized, out-of-style men’s windbreaker. She had a water and was eating what appeared to be a dinner salad.

I wasn’t sure what was happening. The two women finished their dinner in rather short order and came round to my corner of the bar to speak to the woman next to me. They asked her name, if she had ID, if someone was meeting her…it became apparent through this and then an exchange with the manager, and then with the cop who came in later, this woman had been there since the restaurant had opened at 4:30pm. It was now close to 7:30pm. She told the two women she didn’t have her ID…it was in Concord, but that she was a special forces police officer. Her badge was in Concord, too. Her friend told her to meet her there…she would pick her up. I am not sure what her real story was, but I was fairly certain no one was coming.

As I ate my salad and drank my wine, I listened to the men next to her mocking her. I also heard them and others discuss the election. Thinking I couldn’t hear them, one of them even alluded to my story of voting issues and “rigging.” All the while, here this woman sat next to me, talking to herself. Laughing at nothing. Once I heard her say something about parrots. I knew she was mentally ill and assumed she was homeless. No one one knew what to do with her. No one knew how to make her leave. No one knew how she would pay her bill.

When she went into the bathroom, I grabbed her check. It was $6.00. I wanted to pay it. No one would make eye contact with me. I wanted to ask them their end game, but the manager who had come to talk to me earlier was suddenly uninterested. The cop never came back or else I would have asked him. Were they waiting for her not to pay? Would they just send her to jail for that? Was that a solution? She was in the bathroom for a long time. Finally I got the bartender to take notice of me. I told her what my husband said, that paying it might not be helpful to anyone. She asked her manager, and he agreed. The men who had voted against “a global economy and society” but instead felt like we needed more “borders” and believed each of the 50 states could govern themselves had left. When she came out, I was the only one who saw her peel out what money she had…it wasn’t a lot, but she paid the check, and while the bartender was putting that into the register drawer, the woman put another $3 on the bar and walked out.

We left shortly thereafter, after the other regulars at the bar eating their dinners and drinking their martinis offered their snide analysis of the events. They had started to the right of her and me but had all moved to the opposite end of the bar to the left of my husband before all was said and done.

I got in the car and started to cry. I started to sob in fact. Gasping sobs. This is why my vote meant so much to me. This is why I can’t imagine what will happen if Trump is elected. We have few systems in place now…what would happen with HIM?? I was hysterical the entire way home. I realized in a visceral and guttural way the fears I have for our country with a Trump mindset in control. We are already lacking in our policies and still have a lot of progress to make on so many social issues…what happens if we swing to the opposite extreme? I fear for my daughter and her friends. I shudder for her children.

As I sit here and desperately try to coherently type my feelings and thoughts, I am wearing my dad’s Cubs trucker style hat, watching the Cubs trying to take the series to game 7 of the World Series, so far quite successfully. My dad was born and raised in St. Louis. However being born in ’29 meant he was raised a Brown’s fan. He never forgave them for leaving St. Louis. He never fully embraced the Cardinals for that fact, and instead, became a Cubs fan by default. The Cubs. The never winning Cubs. He loved that team, probably in part of their inability to take it all the way. Who doesn’t love an underdog? Who doesn’t want to believe in what can potentially be?

He died while I was pregnant with my daughter, suddenly and without warning.

How I miss him.

I miss his integrity. He taught me how to be a fighter and to express myself, verbally, in writing, politically and socially. He was the one with whom I had late night philosophical discussions after coming home from being out with my friends. He was the one who wanted me named John Robert. He was the one I saw weep when Reagan was elected — the same night I heard him utter the “F” word the first and only time in my presence. I root for the Cubs right now because of him. And I root for my country in the way I do because of him. I cried for that woman and the rest of us tonight because of what he and my mother instilled in me: A desire to be better, to do better, to try.

I can only hope that integrity and goodness trumps unfairness and vileness in the coming days. It has indeed been a shit show from the get go. The fat lady’s not singing yet, but I hear her warming up, Dad.