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Things Paulo likes: The playground. Raspberries. Elmo.

Things Paulo hates: DEMOCRACY.

Not only was the experience of voting very hard on this young man (see Exhibit A: DEMOCRACY IS THE WORST.) – partially due to a citizen of Back Bay who actively enjoys making babies cry and complained to the election official when we had accidentally entered the middle portion of a line (after being in line for over an hour, mind you) because ZOMG THESE BABIES THEY KEEP WANTING THINGS. Or something. Whatever. Anyhow, the voting experience took a very long time and someone found it really, really boring. I tried to make this an object lesson in how our civic duty is both very important and very boring, but mostly it became an object lesson in It’s A Damn Good Thing I Brought An Entire Bag of Goldfish.

But also: waiting for election results? Horrors. OH THE AGONY. I usually don’t watch TV unless Paulo is deeply and truly asleep. But… polls were closing! To say I was keyed up about the election is putting it mildly. I was not quite at Josh Lyman “I NEED NUMBERS!” levels, but I was definitely at “ZOMG OHIO I AM GOING TO PEE MYSELF” levels. I was much, much more emotionally invested in this election than I have been in any in my adult life – possibly because being a parent, I feel I have more at stake. Or possibly because being older, I’ve been paying attention longer. Or possibly just because this has been the longest, most exhausting election cycle I’ve ever seen which added to the suspense of SOMEONE HAS TO WIN SO THIS CAN END.

In any case, all Paulo understood is “Mom is watching TV without me and then when Dad got home and let me out of bed to play and have snacks it turned out to not even be a cartoon, ugh, mom has no taste!” And man was that ever distressing for him. I ended the night having to bid farewell to my girlfriend Rachel Maddow on the TV and watch the NBC news stream on my laptop with the volume on the lowest level, lest someone become aware that Mama was still watching things. That were not cartoons. I’m quite glad I did as Obama’s acceptance speech reminded me of why I’ve voted for him twice and why I’m proud that I’ll be able to tell Paulo that his first time standing in line at the polls was for Obama.

That said: I do want to put it out there that while I did not like Mitt Romney and it would be a sign of pod person invasion if I personally voted Republican, I am not against Republicans. Not at all. I believe that Republicans have taken the same information that I have, thought about it just as hard, care about their families and communities just as much, and simply come to different conclusions based on having different priorities. Simple as that. I know there was a lot of sentiment amongst a lot of people that I know that people who voted the “wrong” way were delusional, but that’s not how I see it. Romney voters likely think that I am delusional, so… it’s just what you do with the information that you have. As Obama said in his speech – we’re one American family. We just come to the table with different ideas based on our different experiences.

The tricky part is working together when you fundamentally disagree on things, but I have faith that we can do it – as individuals and, hopefully, as a country. Maybe we’ll never reach across the aisles and sing kumbaya, but maybe we can start by simply abandoning the negativity that so often accompanies politics.

ANYHOW.

Some Whuffles “enjoying” democracy and also, the first snow of the year.

 

[ This photo makes the line look reasonable. Yeah. Once you got *in* to the building it snaked around through two hallways – had I any inkling of this, I would have come back later. ]