Stories from the Campaign Trail

I hesistate to even bring up politics given the intensity with which my friends all fought during our recent Presidential election. Can I just say to everyone:

If your guy lost, move on.

If your guy won, move on.

No one ever said "you know, that last meme that made fun of my political party really changed my mind."

No one.

Ahem. And my guy lost but I still thought it'd be fun to share the funny parts of my brief stint campaigning for him in middle America. It started with a seven hour ride.

On a bus.

Actually, it started with me running from work, to the bus, and getting stuck in the metro doors, dropping one of my bags outside the train and tugging helplessly at the other one stuck in the door until strangers helped me pry the door open and toss my bag back to me. But I digress...

Which reminds me of one of my favorite metro stories that my friend Rod, the other Goldfish Poodle, witnessed. One day, strangers were all standing around inside a metro car when it stopped and one of them got off. But a random bag was still lying on the floor of the train. So all of a sudden, a startled passenger yells out to the person who just got off and says "You forgot your bag!!" then before anyone could register what was happening, that person flung said bag OUT of the train as the door closes. ...then, one of the other passengers looks down then yelps "what did you do with my bag!?" and had to jump off at the next stop and catch a train back to where their bag was. Ha! People's misfortune is funny....

Anyway. So I show up outside the Republican Party's headquarters, and there are masses of people and several giant tour busses loading up and we all go to different places and of course my bus has the longest journey. Overnight. So we are supposed to sleep on this bus where our knees are up in our chins and that doesn't happen so we arrive at our destination sometime around 3am and then have to wake up at 6:30. And knock on doors. And be friendly.

 
I'ma need quite a bit of coffee for this, friends.

So we head out to one of the campaign centers in this town and we get paired up with a local volunteer who will drive us around while we jump out and knock on specific houses that the party has already determined are either undecided or voting for our candidate. And we get a script and some materials to leave behind if no one answers, and we get maps and are unleashed on neighborhoods 7 hours away from where we live. And both parties do this. And we all do it for free. In fact we clammor to make sure we GET to do this for free, in the cold, over a weekend. Silly politicals...

Anyway, my friend Rebekah is with me and we join another DCer and all jump in the car of a local man who will be a driver for that day.

And he's chatty.

And he's uber Republican. Like enough to annoy me and I'm obviously also Republican (see: my years working for President Bush. like HERE). And he has plastered giant black  Romney/Ryan signs across both back windows of his car so that when Rebekah and I get in, we can no longer see out.

It was like that Frasier episode where his neighbor put a giant American flag over his windows and Frasier couldn't see outside and finally yells "I feel like I'm living in a giant clown's POCKET!"

That's how Rebekah and I felt trying to look out our windows. Like we were living in the pocket of a giant black shirt. It made for easy spotting from the outside though. After we'd been walking around random neighborhoods for a while we'd hear "looks like your ride's here!" as those giant signs and car attached would round the corner...

But of course, we couldn't help find addresses from the inside, yet the driver continually would ask anyway. "Hey, do you guys see 2214?..." Me and Rebekah look at each other. "Yeah - nope! We really can't see anything back here...." But he was too busy talking to ever realize.

The other thing it took him awhile to realize was that his car automatically locks its own doors once you start driving, so every time we'd try to get back in, the doors would be locked. Every. Time.

So we spent all day jumping out of the clown's pocket, knocking on doors (of people whose names Rebekah couldn't be bothered with so I'd end up saying "this is the house of Mr. Vaclovas" and Rebekah would repeat "Baklava -- got it" and on she marched to ring the doorbell....), and walking back to the car, trying to open the door, being denied, then finally getting back in.

But we haven't even gotten to half the stories yet. I'll  have more in the next post but I'll leave you with a pic of my favorite sign from the campaign headquarters -

I should probably note that Rebekah and I never were given yard signs...