A Day at the Polls (Apologies to the Marx Brothers)

You missed a big opportunity last week.
While the polls were open I stood on Bourne Road, practically saying ‘Here I am, take your best shot!’
I was doing ‘visibility’, for the candidate of my choice.
In this day and age it seems silly to think that you can affect the outcome of an election by holding a sign and doing the Queen Elizabeth.
You’d think they’d have come up with something a little more high-tech by now.
Then again, Chris Gabrieli spent $8,000,000.00 on television ads, and he lost. He could have used a few more people holding signs, and grinning foolishly.
So there I was on Election Day, outside of the South Elementary, all by my lonesome, watching the cars closely, ready to duck the occasional soft-boiled egg.
But for the first 30 minutes it was just me, and my son.
He stayed with me until the buses started to arrive, and then just walked up the access road to school. For him it was an adventure, a real break from his routine: for me, a bit boring at first.
I brought a walkman and headphones, and was planning on listening to a recording of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” as I stood there.
Who would know?
‘Visibility’ is a lot like a long vacation drive: the only thing between you and your destination is boredom.
I brought a chair too, but thought better of sitting down. The headphones were fine – but sitting down on the job would be a tacit admission that my heart was not really in it.
But my heart was not really in it.
I strongly support my candidate, and have done a variety of things to support his election, but I’m too old to hold a sign and grin at passing strangers.
So I grinned, and held on to consciousness, instead.
And then the competition started to arrive.
How could I sit down when the opposition’s volunteers remained standing, waving, and looking so damned enthusiastic?
There was a good chance, I thought, that seeing me with my sign would convince voters to choose the opposition.
But it didn’t seem to matter, early on: apart from an early morning rush the voters were few and far between.
So I grinned at the street.
And stared into the cloudless sky.
And I held my sign up for the early birds: mostly the landscape crews who seemed surprised to see us there.
By 8:30 a.m. or so, across from me in a patch of grass and shade there were several other volunteers: a Reilly sign holder; a Sullivan sign holder; and the better part of two families waving a collection of placards, signs and banners urging people to vote Yes on Question One.
Now that was some serious ‘Visibility’.
Without being overtly sexist, let me say that the Vote Yes families were far more pleasant to look at than yours truly.
They turned their visibility assignment into a picnic.
They sat down – on beach chairs, or on blankets in the grass.
Embarrassed, I remained standing.
They had youth, fashionable clothes, cute kids, and juice boxes.
I had age, old jeans, and a lukewarm bottle of water.
Thank goodness my candidate wasn’t up against them.
When people finished voting and drove past our area again, most seemed to deliberately turn away from me as they drove by.
But when the same cars passed the Vote Yes Float they slowed, smiled, waved, threw kisses, posed for pictures, or helped with the barbeque.
I am joking about the float, but not much else
One of their supporters even had a bull horn that played show tunes.
And they didn’t have just one lone volunteer, squinting into the sun and casting furtive glances down at his watch.
They had groups of mothers with hordes of children, working 3 or 4-hour shifts, who gave way to identical looking and equally enthusiastic replacements.
It may have been the sun, but I got the feeling that Plymouth was changing, evolving, right before my eyes: from a small, parochial, somewhat slow-moving blue-collar town, to an energetic, gas-guzzling homes along the fairway kind of community.
The winners seem to come in fleets of pastel SUVs with matching baby seats driven by blonde mothers in Capri pants.
Standing all day at Precinct 9, at the entrance to the school, you got the impression that there was a world-wide shortage of men.
The school buses were driven, for the most part, by women.
The teachers were predominantly female.
And most of the volunteers were women as well...
From where I stood it seemed that women were out-voting the men 2-1.
But then again, I probably took more notice of the women.
And I am not sure how clear I was thinking as the day progressed.
From my position on Bourne Road, I faced directly into the sun. I felt my cheeks beginning to burn just after noon, but I had to grin and bear it.
I had anticipated an overcast day, with cool temperatures, and so was dressed accordingly.
Instead it was almost a cloudless day, near 80 degrees
I remained vigilant, and would have probably taken a seat after the sun went down and the voting slowed, but that didn’t happen. When the sun went down the voting intensified.
In the end, as you know, my sense that YES women were dominating the process and would swamp the opposition, was a bit off the mark. I’ve learned that at other precincts there were many YES men too. In Precinct 9, where I stood all day, it turns out there were slightly more “NO” votes overall..
Town-wide though, the Soccer Moms won a big victory.
My guy won too, no thanks to me.
It also seemed a big (though probably temporary) victory over apathy, as the turnout approached 50%.
The only big losers were those who would have liked to give me a piece of their mind, or a fresh tomato.
Better luck next time.