I was in the middle of an anxiety dream involving my mother, peanut sauce and Wales when the sound of a door opening jarred me awake.
It was Sweetheart, with our morning coffees.
After I attempted to describe the dream (Sweetheart: “Peanut stew? That sounds terrible!”), I said, “It’s Election Day!”
Then, I started to sing. “Electehhhhhhhd……Selectehhhhhhed…….Hallelujah……..”
Sweetheart just looked at me. After more than a decade together, we’re pretty used to each other’s quirks. One of mine is breaking out in song. Sometimes before coffee.
“Alice Cooper!!” I said. “You’ve never heard ‘Elected?’ ”
Sweetheart is a metalhead, so even though I was in eighth grade when I bought “School’s Out,” and “Billion Dollar Babies” (“Elected is on the latter) mostly because I had a slight crush on Lee Rubin and he was all about Alice Cooper, I was a little surprised he hadn’t heard it. But then I remembered that he’d been in second grade back then, an automatic youth-vote-pass situation.
Getting back to that crush, it turned out to be a good thing, because those were albums to which I would not have otherwise been exposed. Rolling Stone hated both albums. I didn’t and it broadened my musical horizons. (The crush ran its course, and LR was never the wiser.)
In the kitchen, the current non-voting dog roamed about. I made Sweetheart a hummus, olive & lettuce sandwich after cuing up two versions of the song, a live version Alice performed on Jimmy Kimmel from 2016 and the original studio recording.
For the more musical-theater inclined, Randy Rainbow (who we saw live this past Friday when he toured Flyover Country – thanks, Randy!) dropped a new voter-encouragement tune last night. The man is a genius at lyrics and also, clearly, a time-management god.
I have not written any songs by which to vote, but I do have some encouraging pictures.
It’s 6:49 a.m. and the polls open in 11 minutes……gotta run.
POSTSCRIPT@ 7:11 am: I was Voter #4. There was a line of about five people behind me; a man was registering on-site. That’s more mid-term activity than I’ve seen at my sleepy polling place in the 18 years I’ve voted there!
POSTSCRIPT@5:26 pm: Sweetheart sent me a text after he voted at 4. “199. They cheered for 200!” So I stopped by the polls on my way home from Unlearning Racism class. Voter #238 had just slid his ballot into the box; an observer from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was sitting in the corner & a steady stream of voters was cycling through the school library-turned-polling room. The chief poll worker was ecstatic, and so am I.
“I think we’re going to hit 50 percent!” she said.
I told her I will stop by after my MIRACLE (Mental Wellness in the Urban Church) meeting and see how many more people had voted. Because I talked to the election observer, I had to sign the sheet that said I was observing. There was a spot to indicate who I was representing.
I wrote, “My neighborhood!”
POSTSCRIPT@8:07 pm: At 7:45, Voter 276 was registering. As I walked out and toward my car, a man was getting out of the leopard-print-covered seat of his late-model Camry.
“Are they still open?” he said.
“Yes!” I answered, “You’re #277!”
the sentence factory 