Election 2008

This just in! OK, not really. Just a few scenes and vignettes from my experience on election day, 2008.

Like a million zillion schools across the country, my school conducted a mock election among the students today. The ballots were distributed in the morning by 4th graders. As a voter, I was pleased to see that they had all the presidential candidates listed. As a kindergarten teacher I thought, "How the hell am I going to explain this to 5 and 6 year olds?"

First we had a talk about the office of president. "What does a president do?" I asked. "They run," answered a child.

As it turned out, they had a lot to say about the election. I have a lot of children of immigrants in my class, and I do not know which ones' parents are citizens. But they spoke up, and they all knew Barack Obama's name.

On to the voting. I showed them the ballots. I talked about how many people were on the ballot for president, but it was most likely that either Obama or McCain would be the next president. I said, "See the B? B for B-B-B-Barack. Make a check in that box if you want to vote for Barack Obama. See the J? J for J-J-J-John McCain. Make a check in that box if you want to vote for John McCain. Then we'll have snack." I confess I took a quick peek as they gave them back to me. (And the kids who voted for Obama got big thick chocolatey Hershey bars, while the McCain voters got a handful of dry Cheerios. Just kidding!) It leaned heavily toward Obama (12 - 2) and I was tickled no end to see that one child had voted for Cynthia McKinney. That child must be a maaaaverick. Or else she was totally confused and checked any old box.

At the end of the day when the results were tallied, Emerson school voted 256 - 17 for Obama. (With 3 votes for 3rd party candidate, reliable sources tell me.) Jeez, I teared up when the results were announced! If this is how a mock election affects me, how will I feel tomorrow if the results are favorable?

I left school right away to go vote myself. My polling place is at the high school down the street. I love voting there; it's one reason I chose not to vote early. I see my neighbors, and some of the same people have worked that polling place for at least the 16 years I've voted there. I was on autopilot when I got up to the table to sign in for my ballot. "Ed vote yet?" says the poll worker. "Huh?!" I look up for the first time; oh, it's my neighbor Carol, the smokin', drinkin', cursin' nun who cruises around in her red Jeep. "Sorry," I say. "I didn't pay attention to who you were! I'm just so focused on voting."

No hitches to voting. I marked my ballot, checked it over about 5 times, said a little prayer and fed it into the optical scanner. On the way out, I passed an extremely elderly-looking woman coming in. "Is this where we vote?" she asked. (They moved it to a bigger room than usual to accommodate more voters.) She looked somewhat confused, so I stood and watched her go in to make sure she was alright. Just outside the door she stopped, pulled a comb out of her purse, and combed her hair! I was touched. We've gotten so used to casual -- just the way that we got used to apathy until this election -- that it is hard to remember another time when election day was a BIG DEAL and you dressed up for it. Clearly she remembered.

As I was leaving I passed a young man coming in to vote: Steven, one of my former first grade students, voting in his first presidential election! That was so cool!

So now it's just sit back and wait. If things are looking good, I'm thinking of heading downtown to see if there will be dancing in the streets. (I'm still burned up over the fact that I was out of the country when Nixon resigned in '74, and I missed the celebration.)

Breathe in. Breathe out.