2000-11-08-11:05 pm CDT
Happy election Day! So this is what happened to me. I did not vote. Before you stone me to death let me explain. I applied for my little absentee ballot and it never came! I called, they told me they sent it. I checked my mail. No ballot. I called again, they told me they sent it. I checked my mail and guess what? THERE'S NO ABSENTEE BALLOT!!!! I'm upset. I'm VERY upset. The lovely mailroom people are going to get a very stern talking to. But had I had the chance to vote, it would have been Gore all the way. I wanted to vote Nader. He has the right idea about so many issues. But I, like the rest of the Nader supporters, vote Gore because I'm so afraid of Bush winning. Well if I had voted that's what I would have done. Since this is my very first election in which I could have voted my dad gave me some advice. "Steph," he says, "never vote Republican. The minute you do everything goes to hell in a handbasket. Unemployment will go up, unions will be broken and then we have some trouble." The funny thing about my dad is that we never have intellectual conversations. Politics and money bring out the best in him, I suppose. Nothing else is important. We have a very strange relationship, my dad and I. He loves me, I know he does. I love him. But he has some very depressing, negative world views. His first concern is with money. Money this and money that. Money is everything. Without money the world doesn't work. He doesn't realize that life means much more than money and stuff. Always afraid of losing what we have, he has no time to enjoy it. I hate that he can't look at a plant growing or a child playing and see what I see. Maybe he does. Maybe his insecurities simply do not allow him to be the person that I know is there. The one who always sends me back to school with a care package (real food!) He tries not to show the person who cried when his mother died or the one who went to the hospital every day all those times my mother was sick. He doesn't let anyone see the father who gives chance after chance to a son who never seems to do the right thing. He simply cannot show the world the daddy who took us sledding when we were small, the one who always always made sure that we had money to go to the movies, the one who let one child join the military and fly off to Japan. The one who sent his daughter to college, the first one in the family. His life, the one that everyone else sees is that of a bitter man. Maybe someday, I'll be able to tell my father that his life is worth so much more than he perceives it to be and he'll believe me. Maybe he'll show the world the man that I see. One day he'll be able to stop seeing the price of things and start seeing their value. Maybe. . . Have a happy, shiny day, and remember to always try and see the value of things instead of their price. Love,
Supersteph
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