Election Day

This is my first blog. What is a blog? That is a rhetorical question. If I really cared I would look it up.

This morning Diana and I stood in line at 5:50am outside Emily Dickenson Elementary School on 96th street and waited for the polls to open. The line was already winding around the block. On the corner someone had posted a sign -- "No electioneering beyond this point" -- creating a safe zone where no one could hassle us (Broadway has been teeming with Obama supporters for weeks). The man behind us had brought his morning paper, and we felt slight envy while we waited. The doors opened promptly at 6am and the line moved forward. Richard and Susan, neighbors who live upstairs in our building, were among the first to exit. We chatted for a moment before they bustled off, Susan in the lead with Richard in tow (their usual configuration). We were soon in the building and in a big room full of voting machines and card tables manned by volunteers of all shapes and sizes and before I knew it I was in a booth reading instructions and pushing and pulling levers on a machine straight out of that scene in The Princess Bride where Prince Humperdink comes storming into the Pit of Dispair and Count Rugen yells "Not to 50!" and poor Westley takes it like a man (he dies screaming). Anyway I'm halfway through reading Proposition I when people start calling into me "Everything okay?" and "Do you need any help?" and Diana is explaining "He's from NH, they use pencils there" and I rush through the last two levers and I'm done and step back through the curtain zipping up my fly (no wait, that's not right) to see a small line had formed. I stood nearby while Diana voted near a poll organizer with neat dreadlocks and a broad white-toothed grin. The room was bustling with people who did not resemble me or I expect share my life experience much beyond wanting to survive and thrive and be reasonably good and honest without taking too much on the chin. The mood was optimistic and alive and at 6:45 when Diana was finished we walked out taking the mood with us and it stayed with us through our walk around the reservoir in Central Park and the subway ride into work. We're still feeling it, actually, as we settle down this evening to watch the results.