This morning, as I try to do on a fairly regular basis, I went to play morning basketball.  On my way back into my driveway a grey Pacifica minivan was heading in the opposite direction.  It was only 7:10 am and atypical of our morning routine because it was Shirley’s van heading in the opposite direction.  Usually I am the one who brings the kids into school and usually we are on a schedule that will get us to school a good five minutes after everyone else in Tod’s class has situated themselves in their seats for the day.  I assumed it was loaded with our two kids but decided to call and make sure because by my estimates she was going to get the kids to school at least 35 minutes early (this would make up for at least a full week of tardiness if you were able to just implement a plus minus system).   I had a hunch as to what caused this unexpected uber punctuality, but I needed to call Shirley just to confirm.  “Well, when I woke up my clock said it was already 7:10 so I scrambled to get ready and I woke up the kids after my shower.  Only then did I realize my clock was still an hour ahead and it was only 6:10 when I woke up.   Yep, another one of the pitfalls of being a procrastinator.  Change the clock on the microwave, that’s way too much work, I’ll do it tomorrow, or we can just keep it like it is for the next six months and wait for the next day light savings time change.

In all honesty, Sunday night I sat down on my bed and tried to change my alarm clock and couldn’t figure out how to do it.  After five minutes of dicking with it I gave up, what I should have done is have Tod come over and change it for me, the kid is only five but he has already lapped me when it comes to technology.  Technology frightens me almost as much as old people, clowns, and midgets, that’s how wary I am of it.  In my defense there is a notation above the snooze bar that says “time change” or something to that affect, but no matter what I did with the snooze button I couldn’t bump my alarm clock back an hour.

While my initial thought was that Shirley forgot her clock was an hour off, I also thought that maybe she wanted to get to the polls early and beat the rush.  What a way to acclamate our children to the election process.  “Ok kids, mommy has to vote for the president,  this is something we do every four years.”

“Like the olympics?”

“Something like that, but this is much more meaningful, ok wait a minute, at this point they may both be a gigantic waste of time and money, forget I said that.”

While Shirley actually went to Denny’s instead of the nearest polling location to burn the extra time she had on her hands, I decided to get my civic duty over with first thing.  I arrived and found a manageable line.  The first thing I noticed as I walked into vote was that there were no political bumper stickers on anyone’s vehicle.  Even in the worst of times, with the most deplorable candidates running for president such as Al Gore and George W, people put bumper stickers on their cars announcing to the world who they thought was the best person for the job.  Not this year, no one wanted to openly claim that they were affiliated with either candidate, the only thing more regrettable than putting a Trump or Clinton bumper sticker on your car is a spring break tramp stamp, but at least the tramp stamp can be out of sight out of mind, every time you go to your car you fill with regret when you catch site of that bumper sticker.  I realize you can peel it off after the election, but what if they run again, shouldn’t you just keep it on for four years in case that happens?

However, the length of the line was illusory, inefficiency was rampant due to one fact, old people.  No, not the voters, the people manning the polling place had a median age of 103 years of age. There were numerous booths wide open for people to sit down and cast their votes in, but due to the fact that old people suck at everything and are never in a hurry to do anything because they have limitless amounts of time, at least until they die, time was being wasted.  Granted, they were all very nice, but for the most part that was probably due to the fact that they felt like they were actually contributing to society instead of doing what they normally do, creating traffic problems or writing checks at the super market.  I’m quite certain the next thing all these old codgers had to look forward to, if they lived long enough, was the next election in two years when they could once again be of service to their country.  Seriously, you have the election on a Saturday and you can probably get some volunteers who are below the age of 100 and on top of that benefit people won’t have to take time from work to vote.  The only line I am willing to take time off form “work” to wait in is a line to buy the new I phone or for a roller coaster (but now that they have the fast pass at amusement parks so I will never wait in line for a roller coaster again, they should have a fast pass for every single line out there, if you have the financial means to get to the front of the line you should be allowed to do so)

Seriously, how much do you think the DMV could get for a fast pass?  I’d pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars.  (I realize you can do all that shit on line, but by the time I get around to re-newing my license and plates I have missed my window and am forced to go in person.  The upside is your self esteem receives quite the boost when you compare yourself to all the other people at the DMV, I often times wonder to myself how anyone in the DMV actually owns a car.  On second thought, I may be the only person who actually goes to the DMV who could pay for the fast pass without using pop cans as a currency, so it may not be such a practical idea for the DMV.)

As I was waiting in line to cast my vote I peered at the ballot.  Did you know we actually have a Working Class Party as well as a Natural Law Party?  If the Natural Law Party has anything to do with natural selection they have my vote.  A political party based solely on the premise that only the strong shall survive would literally make this country great by tossing aside all of the weaklings and the hangers on, we really need to think about thinning the heard here as soon as possible.  (I realize this was a primary goal of the Republican Party as well as recently as Ronald Regan as well as Nazi Germany, but the republicans have gotten soft and lost their way, if you really believed in survival of the fittest how could you ever let Obama Care get through?  Any true republican worth their weight would have torpedoed that debacle or died trying).   As far as the working class party is concerned, I feel like the only thing that would qualify my to align with them is that I drive a truck (and occasionally listen to country music, because I own a truck) other than that we have nothing in common.  Plus, what if they were actually proposing a mandatory 40 hour work week or that people have to engage in manual labor a specific amount of time during the week?  That sounds even worse than Obama Care.  No thanks working class party, you want me in your camp you need to change your name to the The Work Less Party.

Unfortunately my integrity was put to the test when I was alone with only my ballot and my conscience.  Shirley and I had an agreement that I was going to vote for her preferred candidate in exchange for what every man wants, a sort of political quid pro quo.  I was all about it until I started thinking about how I would then have to break rank with what I have done for the past 24 years of voting and go against the party I am somewhat affiliated with, however loose that affiliation may be.  Good thing I got her to pay up front, we had a binding contract, there was an offer as well as acceptance and consideration, but good luck trying to figure out what the damages were if I were to breach that contract, a jury would likely find them to be immeasurable.  “You did what with that guy just for one measly vote?”

As I finished up with my ballot and walked over to submit it into the machine I had a dejected feeling come over me.  My focus should have been getting the ballot into the machine correctly so it could tabulate my votes, but my mind was elsewhere.  Earlier I had witnessed a women struggle for at least three minutes to get her ballot to go in correctly and as stated before technology isn’t my friend.  The women assisting with this step was joking with me and telling me the machine wouldn’t accept my ballot if it didn’t like who I voted fore.  I indicted to her that my wife probably wouldn’t accept my ballot either and as I walked away I quipped “I’m not even sure I like who I voted for.”

Because I felt like I had to, I took a sticker that said I voted today.  However,  I felt like I needed a sticker to go under that sticker that read poorly.  In all 24 years that I have been casting votes I have never left feeling so disheartened.