Geezers Rule!

I take you back to a hot September primary election day in Phoenix, Arizona. Back in the sixties, when I was in my twenties, a combination of patriotism, boredom, and a neighbor’s offer to babysit my three pre-school children drove me to volunteer as a precinct worker. Besides, in Goldwater land they were desperate for a registered Democrat to make it all legal. Maybe I was also motivated by the $16 they promised. As a clincher, the business where our local precinct voted was air-conditioned.

Visions of a cool, stimulating day in service of our nation quickly vanished when I learned my job was to accept a small square of paper from each person who had just voted, to pierce it with a needle and to pull it onto a string with other little squares of paper. Sort of like creating popcorn garlands at Christmas, but not as festive. Democracy works in mysterious ways.

In those days, we had real voting booths. Their curtains were striped like those little cabanas set up for changing into your swimming suit by the pool.

What I saw beneath the draped fabric the view wasn’t pretty. Because people wore shorts in that hot climate I viewed quite a parade of naked legs. On view were river systems of varicose veins, crabbed toes in sandals, men whose legs were stuffed into athletic socks, then into black oxfords.

Well, I thought to myself, the scene will improve when people my age stop by to vote on their way home from work. I figured by then we’d have a line out the door.

When five o’clock rolled around my peers didn’t. The room went dead, dead, dead. Where were the young people? The neighbors with children in school? New homeowners burdened by taxes? The ones who bitched endlessly about potholes in the street and lack of funding for instrumental music classes?

Later, when I asked friends why they didn’t vote, the answers varied.

“It takes too much time.” (maybe 15 minutes every couple of years?)

“If I vote I’ll get called to jury duty.” (they might be called anyhow, because many governments also dip into the drivers’ license pools.)

“Nobody I vote for gets elected.” (maybe not now, but how about next time?)

Pondering my day, I realized who is really running this country – Geezers! They vote and they aren’t very interested in day care or public schools for other people’s children.

And I was appalled. In many countries, people were dying because they wanted the right to vote, the privilege of determining their own destiny.

Maybe younger people are still happy with how the country is being run; they must be perfectly content to be facing a war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism, corporate malfeasance and yes - pot holes. Because they still don’t vote.

I was always considered precocious so maybe I became a geezer before my time. I couldn’t vote until I turned 21, but I would no more sit out an election than I would miss the seventh game of the World Series.

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