Un-knowingly I was placed on the election committee for a friend of mine who is running for Circuit Court Judge.  While she would make a great candidate for judge, she may have her shit together even less than I do.  When it comes to procrastinating, its an art form for me and my friend isn’t too far behind as evidenced by the fact that she only had roughly 900 signatures going into this past weekend….and she needed two thousand by today.  Friday morning a zoom call was scheduled for the committee members to coordinate a plan of attack to attempt to gather more signatures in a weekend than my friend had managed to get in the prior 4 months.  I jumped into the call like a ninja and none of the other participants (all liberal women) knew I had joined.  They were talking about makeup, when they rolled out of bed, and running out of shampoo (It’s been decades since I actually purchased shampoo).  I was hoping for a virtual pillow fight where they stripped down to their undergarments, but before that could happen they discovered I had logged in.  The Zoom experiment has been going on for a while now and I still hate it, when you are a D it’s hard to sit back and listen to other people’s terrible ideas and Zoom doesn’t effectively portray my non verbal cues indicating I think the speaker is an idiot.  On top of that, as opposed to in person meetings, it’s hard to determine comedic timing and if a joke truly succeeds.  A couple weeks ago, when it was my buddy’s 41st birthday (he wasn’t making a big deal about it, but I know my Mother-in-law did when she turned 41) we had a zoom happy hour.  I was throwing out some zingers and keeping everyone laughing.  However, one of the guys on the call referenced a friend who owned a national chain of hearing aid stores and was getting crushed by not being able to remain open. I made a joke about all of his clients being wiped out by the corona and the call disbanded immediately.  I thought I was the reason, but my buddies in a later text exchange said that had little to do with it.  However, what didn’t helped was Shirley overhearing the joke and rebuking me for it while I was still on the call.

While the zoom meeting on Friday went well and ended without any awkward joke on my part, I wasn’t real excited about going out and getting signatures from random strangers.  I am not use to getting rejected, and soliciting strangers for signatures to put someone on a ballot when they know nothing about that potential candidate is fraught with potential rejection.  Although, Shirly does give me the Heisman every once in a while, she is a fairly compliant wife in the department that matters most and I didn’t need this petition drive killing my bedroom mojo.  That being said, and whether I wanted to or not, I was on the committee and needed to get signatures.  Saturday morning I drove to a home and dropped a petition in someone’s mailbox and then went back home to get ready for golf (in hindsight I should have brought petitions with me and sat at the second hole after my round to get signatures).  My plan was to go out to Byron Center after golf and get signatures at the Family Fare and then go to a Hungry Howies that my buddy owned (I was playing phone tag with him about where he would let me go, crazy he didn’t seem to want to respond to my texts or answer my call).  When I returned from golf I still hadn’t heard back from my buddy so I called a local pizza place, I may as well have asked them if I could sell five dollar hot and readies in their parking lot.  Look, I get what’s going on right now and understand why they would be apprehensive, but there aren’t many places where you can find people these days.  So, with that response I figured it best to call Family Fare, fortunately I had an ace in the hole having done the manager of the stores divorce.  Luckily, he was working and I was able to speak with him, while he was nicer about it than the pizza place, the only people they let peddle wares at their stores are the girl scouts and the salvation army.  I say if you are going to exclude some groups, exclude them all, then I wouldn’t be forced to use the fire exit when the girl scouts are trying to sell thin mints at the grocery store.  Do I like thin mints?  of course I do, but there’s at least a 300% mark up on those things.

So, I implemented plan B and accomplished something productive by cleaning out my storage barn and organizing it.  I was hoping no one would ask how many signatures I had totaled during our Zoom call that night, but inevitably someone asked me where I was at.  Fortunately I had gone out to Sparta on Friday and managed to secure 3 signatures so I wasn’t sitting on goose egg.  Ultimately, it was discovered that I only had 4  and I took a considerable amount of ribbing from other committee members, but you know what, screw them, I was the only realist on the committee, there was a better chance of Bernie Sanders becoming president than there was of my friend getting on the ballot.  (every committee needs a realist on it to set off the “everything is rainbows and lollipops people”).  However, I had to put forth somewhat of an effort to make it seem like I tried when all of the signatures were counted and we were only at 1300.  So, a friend of mine who knows my friend running for judge and I went to a Starbucks drive thru, set up a table with signage on it and went to work.  You would have thought we were trying to put a proposal to outlaw caffeinated beverages on the next ballot, no one would even look at us, maybe 1 out of 12 vehicles rolled down their window and engaged us.  After two hours we managed a paltry 15 signatures.

While the number of signatures was disappointing, it was totally worth it to hang out and watch my friend in action.  She is the type of person who will say anything to anyone, I am only that type of person when I am competing against someone, she’s that way all the time.  She also doesn’t give a shit about social distancing which was refreshing to see.  She would get right up by the people’s window and basically lean on their car and chat them up.  One of the signees was hoping the petition was to recall Whitmer, and had that been the case I am confident we would have easily hit the 100 signature mark.  In addition to my friend, there was another women on the committee who was literally a signature garnering rock star.  Her and another attorney who also has an outgoing, I’m not afraid of rejection attitude were the people able to get er done the most effectively.

When I stand back and watch these types of people I am in awe, not my personality, I am outgoing once I know someone and am comfortable with those people in my presence, but I am not going out of my way to chat complete strangers up as if they were my best friend growing up.  In my mind it’s a skill you either have or you don’t, but that could be because I grew up in a Dutch household that frowned upon showing your emotions and engaging people so maybe there is a nature vs. nurture argument here.  One other thing I picked up is how people can be so positive and disregard fact an logic when attempting to achieve a goal.  Again the Dutch upbringing may have a role in this, but I stood back and looked at the numbers and knew there was no way were getting 2,000 signatures.  However, everyone on the committee during every zoom call was like a high school cheer leading squad, exuberant and full of positivity.  I really could have used someone else who had the negative outlook I typically possess to point out we were the Titanic when it comes to getting signatures, that would have allowed me to pile on and cleanse my negativity pallet.  The reality is it has to be great to be positive and misguided all the time, but as I have stated before a tiger can’t change its stripes.

Did I want to point out to the committee that they were akin to the Lion’s cheerleaders and all the hip hip hoorah was a waste of time and energy?  Of course I did, and there would have been no better way to do this than relay my story of what happened to me on Sunday afternoon when I had the brilliant idea of going to the Kent trails trail entrance in Byron Center.  I set up my table at the trail head and the looks I initially received from people would have made one think that I was trying to sell a magical elixir that remedied constipation, diarrhea, ED, and COVID-19.  In the first five minutes on the trail I was able to lure one person over to sign the petition as well as commiserate with me as to how awful our governor is.  I’m with my people this is going to go splendidly!  Unfortunately, I was with my people, and that made it go terribly.  I couldn’t even get people to look at me, I now know how the Direct Tv guy at Costco feels, I managed to get one women who was with her husband to engage with me and as I was “chatting” her up her husband prompted her to disregard me by  saying “Let’s get Moving!”  what a dick.  When the dust had settled I managed 3 signatures and two of them were from people I knew.  While I wanted to be the Grinch of Whoville I withheld my story and merely stated the number of signatures I had gathered.  While the number was under whelming, my positive liberal friends still cheered, treating me like a kid who comes in last in a 40 yard dash by 35 yards.

As of Sunday night we were at roughly 1650 signatures, what was problematic is Monday was likely going to see a reduced amount of traffic out and about as everyone was returning to work at home.  Initially I was planning on going back to Starbucks with my friend, but we both decided that was not the best plan of attack primarily because we didn’t want to go through another morning of humiliation.  Instead I made a list of all the people I know who I could likely get to sign and came up with roughly 35 people. Monday morning I began texting various people and had a number of them lined up to visit with my petition when a tweet came out that the deadline had been extended as well as a reduction in the number of required signatures.  What a relief, I wasn’t going to have to drive to every corner of Kent County to make it look like I tried (even though I had nothing better to do other than teach my kids, and it was kind of refreshing to have a purpose for once)  Unfortunately this was a committee with all attorneys on it and someone texted their concerns about an appeal of the Federal Judge’s ruling that altered things.  Damn attorneys!  Seriously, there was roughly an hour where it felt like I was on the world’s tallest and hilliest roller coaster.  Eventually it was determined that there was little likelihood of appeal but that those of us still tasked with getting signatures should do their best.

Well, I decided to get some signatures and use that as an excuse to catch up with some people who I had not seen in a while, killing two birds with one stone.  I picked up 8 additional signatures while also acquiring some much needed socialization.  One of the interactions I had stands out more than the others.  I finally connected with Wild Pizza Bill (the Hungry Howies guy) and he said he was going to be at his office.  His wife was at their house and I was close by so I asked if he could text her about signing.  Suddenly a text pops up from a foreign number asking if there is a website where she can check my friend out.  Immediately I knew it was my friend’s wife (she drives a Prius and may be more left than Bernie Sanders).  I was able to get her to sign but not without her questioning the fact I wasn’t wearing a face mask, to which my response was basically fuck that, then telling me that I shouldn’t try to organize any outdoor pick up basketball games.  Seriously, why does every liberal think they know what is best for everyone?

I’ll say this, I wasn’t looking forward to doing the signature drive, and every hour of the weekend spent not attempting to fill up petitions with signatures from registered voters in Kent County (which was a lot) was clouded with guilt as I golfed, did chores, or hung out with my family.  However, in hind sight it was a rewarding experience and something to spice up what would have been just another  ho hum weekend in lock down.  One last observation, I encountered one family on my signature drive who have two kids the same age as mine and they are also both boys, when I entered their house it was spotless and there was no sign of clutter.  You guys should be ashamed of yourselves! (for making me feel even worse about what a shit show my house is)