Sitting in a running car all day, slowly creeping past every house in a precinct, shouldn’t be tiring. It sorta was, though. How did that work? I had the easy job. I wrote tiny addresses in the corners of the voter guides that we had volunteered to pass out. My partner did all the walking and taping the guides on doors. (We used painter’s tape, so don’t think we were vandalizing or anything.) I was there for my organizational skills and to be a backup for safety. Yeah, safety. The area where we were is densely populated, with dozens of apartments that command rather modest rents. It’s the kind of neighborhood that inspires the statement “was that sound fireworks or a gunshot” more often than it ought to. In fact, a guy shot someone in self defense (he said) on Thursday on the last street we canvassed, and the shooter was arrested like a block from my house. (That was the day I was so sick I couldn’t keep my eyes open, so I had no idea it was happening.) We were there all day, and for the most part I felt pretty safe. Not sure how I would have felt if we were there at night or on a weekend when everyone was home.
It was a beautiful day to be out doing this volunteer work. I’m glad my buddy took the walking-in-the-sun part, but it was still fun to be out and about. After the big snowstorm this weekend, we have returned to autumn. The storm made trees drop their leaves more forcefully. The sidewalks and streets are absolutely covered. Apparently the gutters on apartment buildings are a wee bit clogged too. While my partner picked up a batch of voter guides from me, where I was parked on the street, I pointed at the ridiculousness I was watching, and repeated the well-worn truism: “this is why women live longer than men.” In between the half dozen roofers working on a two story building was some dude with a leaf blower, kicking up a mess of snow. We moved on before I caved to the temptation of gambling how much longer that gentleman would continue to inhabit this plane of existence.
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