Yesterday was an election day here in the ‘boken. City Council members.
Sunday was a rainy day. In the late grey afternoon, I was vacuuming my living room rug, while blasting ‘The Eminem Show’, when a knock came at my door. I live in a 5th floor walk-up and you can’t get into the building unless someone buzzes you in, so needless to say, I thought, “Who the hell is that?” I opened the door and there was a woman, carrying a clipboard. She had short frosted blonde hair, and was wearing violently vivid majenta lipstick.
I am the kind of person who will hang up on telemarketers with nary an “I’m not interested.” If you presume to intrude upon my 5th floor walk-up castle, then I have no problem telling you to take a hike. So the second I saw her, everything got very hard inside me.
“How did you get into this building?” I asked.
“Oh, somebody buzzed me in.”
She told me that she was running for City Council.
I said, “Now is not a good time, actually.”
But somehow, magically, 20 minutes later she was still standing there and I was saying things like: “If you’re elected, will you fix the parking situation, because it is completely out of control.”
THAT’S a good politician. I opened the door a prickly hermit-crab, and, eventually … all of that dissolved, and when I closed the door on her, my hands were full of pamphlets, brochures, financial statements. And I have no idea when the shift occurred. I also said to her, as she left, “You know, I have collected all the brochures of all the candidates, and my roommate and I read all of them last night, to get informed. But you are the only one who has come by to see me personally. I will not forget that.”
