Word count: 903 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
Like most Philadelphians, my kids didn’t want to vote on Tuesday. My daughter was too busy and my son, well, he wasn’t particularly interested.
Unlike most Philadelphians, however, my kids had an excuse.
Hannah is 8 and was rushing off to a hectic day as a third-grader. Zachary, who is 5, was much more interested in French toast.
I started a family tradition, back in 1992, of hauling my kids into the polling booth, just to show them what it’s like and, hopefully, instill in them a sense of urgency when it comes to the electoral process.
Whether it will do any good I won’t know for many years. But at least the kids have one heck of a pin collection.
Though only 2 at the time, Hannah exhibited an amazing political alacrity and an eerie sense of things to come as I held her up, proudly, behind the curtains of a voting machine.
“Pull the lever,” I told my little girl, holding her finger on the black piece of plastic next to William Jefferson Clinton’s name.
She hesitated.
“Go ahead, pumpkin, pull the lever.”
Again, she demurred.
Then she started bawling.
And refused to pull the lever. So I did. And I walked out of the machine a pretty happy camper despite a crying toddler in my arms.
Finally, I thought for the first time in my life, the guy I voted for will win.
Now, six years later, I am asking my daughter what she knew that I didn’t.
Tuesday was Zackie’s time, though for a while it looked like tradition would be broken and I would trudge off to vote in this lackluster election by my lonesome.
“Maybe next time,” said my boy, shaking his head and announcing, like tens of thousands of Philadelphians, that he just did not want to take part in the electoral process. “I really don’t feel like it today, daddy. The next election.”
Trying a bit of child psychology, my wife offered an inducement, pointing out the large number of construction vehicles near the polling place at the corner of 28th and Dickinson.
“But you can go see the backhoes and the dump trucks,” she told the boy, who was still unmoved.
“I’ve seen dump trucks fifty-a-hundred times,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “I don’t want to go vote.”
I was ready to walk out the door and try again next time. But then my wife offered to whip up some French toast, which was a sufficient enough bribe, because my son wolfed it down, then ran out the door and down the street to the polling place.
Alex Talmadge and the other city commissioners should consider a similar plan if they really want to increase voter turnout.
Maybe free donuts in the voting machines.
Philadelphians will go to great lengths for free donuts.
They might even go vote.
Look how deep the hole is,” my son marveled as we neared the William A. Barrett Nabuurs Community Center, referring to the excavation, not Ivan Itkin’s campaign prospects.
The old rec center smelled like Election Day. Thanks to all the furiously puffing poll workers, the center reeked like an emissions testing chamber.
The workers, some of whom have been there since Lincoln was elected, recognized me and my son and congratulated him for taking part in his first election.
Mostly, I think, they were glad to see somebody, anybody walk in the door.
Just after 8 a.m., I was the 10th voter of the morning.
“You might be the last one we have all day,” said one of the workers, puffing away as I signed my name on the registration form.
“Come on, boy, let’s vote,” I said to my son.
We entered the machine and I pulled the red lever, closing the curtain. My son was awestruck.
“Wow daddy, this is really cool,” he said, just before trying to grab and pull as many levers as possible.
“Whoa,” I said. “You can’t just pull any lever, you have to think about what you are doing.”
Unlike his sister, Zack was more than happy to pull levers.
“Pull this one,” I told him, placing his index finger on the Itkin lever.
“Why?” my boy asked.
“Well… ah… oh just pull the lever,” I told him, not knowing quite how to explain that the last vestiges of squishy liberal sentimentality still lurk deep in parts of my medulla oblongata.
“Why this one?” my boy asked when I told him to pull the lever for Arlen Specter.
“You know the Three Stooges and how they make us laugh?” I told my son. “Well, this guy came up with the single bullet theory and that makes me laugh, too. So let’s vote for him.”
My son, who has followed his father’s lead except for Monday night when he insisted on rooting for the Cowboys, kicked up no fusses and pulled the lever for Specter.
A few more lever pulls, for Chaka Fattah, for Hardy Williams, against the district attorney’s office and for new voting machines, and we were out of there.
“That was fun, daddy,” said the boy. “I want to do it again next time.”
The next morning, he woke me up by jumping in my bed and saying “Daddy, can we go vote today?”
A good attytood.
Which is more than I can say for many Philadelphians, whose next time will be their first.
