Today Is the Day When Elections Are Going On

I woke up early this morning--6am, an unfamiliar and unwholesome hour for a night owl like me. But I was up, nervous and giddy with election fever. Felt like the first day of school, appropriate since my polling place is ol' John Jay High just down the street. So I pulled on my long johns (because I'm low on laundry, but I consciously decided that it's really because the johns are lucky) and some other sundry articles of clothing and rolled down to find a dense line snaking halfway up a block normally thick with teenagers flirting and fighting and yelling into walkie-talkie phones. The line, she wasn't moving. Drag.

My presence was needed to set up a meeting at my office place, so I left. I mean, I guess my presence was needed - that's what I was told, but I did apple jack squat. Drank some coffee, ate some honeydew, made sure a phone worked. With the satisfaction of a job well done, I left the meeters to meet and went back to JJHS. The bulk of the line was gone - it was now confined to only the inside of the building. Huzzah! I plunged in to investigate which line I should join to do the suffrage thing.

Here are some things that happened:

• It all worked out fine.
• It was a little warm inside (especially in lucky long johns) and I had to wait for about 45 minutes. No big deal. But man, the way my fellow voters were acting, you'd have thought we'd been waiting days for rice rations. Oh, how New Yorkers love to grouse.
• I chatted with an old man in an adjacent line as we shuffled past one another. He told me his brother was a carpenter who never voted because he didn't want to get called up for jury duty. Thankfully, the ploy worked--because if you're willing to give up your vote to avoid jury duty, you probably shouldn't be voting or jurying. The system works. The old man was quite affable.
• The mustachioed, betweeded fellow directly in front of me was mighty stressed, fidgeting and complaining to everybody that elections should be held on a Saturday and a Sunday. "Look at this," he gestured to the snakes of people, "Think of all this lost productivity." Good lord, man, this is the one day everybody gets a by (or ought to). Relax your seven highly-effective habits for once and bask in your civic duty.
• A slight, ropey woman in a white track suit cut to the front of my line because she had a four-year-old kid. "It's not my fault public school shut down today," she declaimed with a shrug. "I can't wait in line with a four-year-old." Captain Stache was pissed and told Mom Dynamite that things are tough all over. "Oh really?" she shot back. "Oh Really? Oh really? You're an adult. Are you four years old? Because you're acting like you're four years old. My daughter's four years old and she can't wait in line." Meanwhile, her daughter stood by quietly, wondering what she'd done to make mommy yell at the fuzzy man about her. Also meanwhile, lots of other small children waited in line with their parents. Also meanwhile, Mom Dynamite was an asshole.

The main thing, though, was that I got to vote for Obama again. I voted for him in the primaries in that same hallway in John Jay High, knowing that I was spitting into the Clinton wind blowing through New York. Coastal Democrats had decided that their inland brethren would never support a black man--and so they themselves proceeded to not support a black man, leaving it to "Middle America" to propel Obama to the top of the ticket (by the by, if the term "Middle America" strikes as you similar to the Victorian term "Dark Africa," then you are smart). On Super Tuesday, though, it wasn't clear whether or not that would be the case. So thank you, non-New York/Cali Dems, for letting me vote for Obama again. I was happy to do so.