Flashback: Little April, age 13. It’s a fall Friday night in
Western PA and it’s been a late one. My brother Wendell’s football team is
playing against some other team who’s name escapes me but you get the picture. It’s
the fifth overtime, and one of the coaches keeps stalling the clock. The temperature’s
dropping, the fans can see their breath and it’s starting to rain. The fans are
apathetic, the cheerleaders do a half assed herky, and the players are running into
each other for the sake of shoving someone. Finally one side cares less than
the other, a final touch down is scored and the game ends. The victor is a
blur, but we have all lost because these are hours of our lives we will never
get back.
Cut to TV room. We eat Wendy’s as we watch the scores and
late night TV, my dad switching the channel every time it gets too dirty. Wendell
looks like he has just escaped from dramatic torture. My younger sister Skipper
and my mom nod off. I scribble down some angst ridden death poetry that sounds
as if Mystic Spiral wrote it.
The room is silent because there are things unspoken.
Wendell is on special teams, which means while he will be on the starting
lineup in a year or two he is not there yet. This means he will head out with
the JV squad tomorrow bright and early. Instead of the stadium they will play
on the muddy practice field and it will be even colder and even rainier. As a
bonus, the rest of the family will be forced to come. Will it never end? The
horror! The horror!
Fast forward several years. This is how I feel about the
election. Instead of a high school football coach, it’s Trump yelling,
screaming and trying to stall. Rather than a never ending Friday night under
the lights it’s 2020, and specifically a very charged election season. I look
at Yurick, my pet skeleton on my book shelf. We will look like him when the election
results are finally revealed.
I voted for Biden. Really and truly I wanted Liz Warren. I didn’t
get Liz Warren because sometimes you don’t get the pony you want to get. I
spent a lot of the election season explaining this to fellow Democrats who
swung for Sanders and/or Warren and were disappointed. When I wasn’t doing that
I educated Trump supporters who couldn’t pass a basic civics test giving them
free history lessons on social media. To quote Shakespeare, “Life…..is a tale,
told by an idiot. The sound and the fury signifying nothing.”
I watch CNN for updates although at this point I feel as if
they are just the pretty person teasing all of us. John King is at his magic wall,
but I think he pulled a finger muscle because last night they had his JV
replacement who’s name escapes me because no one cares about the JV at the magic
board.
Dana Bash looks mad as hell at her ex, John King, everytime
he is at the magic wall and thinks, “Damn that magic wall. He cared more about
it than me and it ruined our marriage!”
Anderson Cooper thinks, “I am the son of Gloria Vanderbilt.
I could have ridden my bike, lived off my fortune, and Rick Santorum would have
been forced to be my butler.”
Van Jones thinks, “Well, I haven’t slept, and I am sitting
next to this racist Rick Santorum. The first time he met me he thought I was
Anderson Cooper’s butler.”
Gloria Borger thinks, “I picked this week to stop smoking, I
hate Rick Santorum, and I wish I had a butler.”
And then there is Rick Santorum, the shart in the pants of
my home district who’s greatest hits are talking about man on dog sex and sex
with his mother in law. Prior to being a talking head on CNN, Rick was out of
work politician and father of 8. The idea of being Anderson’s butler was pretty
good until the network offered him a gig. They told him it was to bring
balance, but really it was to do what he does best, say crazy hurtful things
and wear high top shoes, a secret revealed when the camera gives a wide shot. Rick
is as tired as the rest of the panel because now he is making sense. The world
is in fact ending.
If Trump wins I get four more years of bad jokes with Donald
J. Tramp. If Biden wins I get four years of new bad jokes with Joe Bidentime. I
got a puppet. This girl is ready. My mental health and sanity, maybe not.
As a collective, we have had it. Twenty-twenty has been the
high school football match up from hell with too many overtimes and time outs.
At this point, I am done vote shaming. No one is on a winning streak. No matter
which team you are on, I am reaching my hand out like the players did after the
battle on the grid iron was complete. To you, I say, “Good game.”
