Election Fatigue

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.”