With such a contentious presidential election, one thing that campaign officials and ads have been imploring people to do is vote early, if your state allows it. Here in Virginia, that is the case and on Friday, I (Ed) took Asher with me to our regional polling place in Reston. I had to sort of bribe him, telling him we'd go to the library to check out more "train veedos" and return the ones we had right afterward since we were going to be right next door.
Anyway, I figure going to vote a full 11 days ahead of election day, I'll just breeze in and out, we'll go to the library and come back home.
We get there, and parking's impossible. We parked a few blocks away. Then we get to the polling place... and the line is out the door. Who says we're an apathetic bunch? I felt heartened by the sight of Democracy at work. Since we stood in line for more than an hour, me and Asher had plenty of time to talk and I explained to him what was going on. (And to his credit, he was an amazingly well-behaved boy while we waited all that time.)
So I told him, over and over again, that we were going to vote for the next president. He seemed to understand, until about 30 minutes in, he started asking me "we gonna ride de boat?" Apparently, he thought we were waiting in line at a Disneyland ride or something. Once we got to the booths, he saw there wasn't a boat. He was a little disappointed, but he got excited again when I put on one of those "I Voted" stickers on his shirt.
One of my best friends told me of a time she went with her father to the polling place in 1964 when she was three years old. It's not a typical memory, but she remembers it fondly. So who knows, maybe someday Asher will tell his friends about the time he rocked the "boat" with his Papi.
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