Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 504

Why I chose not to vote today and then did anyway.

Here is a fundamental truth about me:

I do not like to be told what to do.

The more I am told what to do, the less likely I will do it, especially if:

I am being told what to do with great earnestness.
Failure to comply will not result in any serious negative consequences.

Today is a perfect example of this fundamental truth in action.

I opened my eyes this morning, looking forward to voting in today’s election.

I take a peek at Twitter through bleary eyes and see a handful of tweets urging me to vote. Simple reminders to vote don’t bother me, but the tweets that attempt to appeal to my civic duty and my patriotism annoy the hell out of me.

Don’t tell me what to do, and especially don’t tell me why you think I should do it.

I want to vote a little less now.

A little later I pop onto Facebook. This is where things start going downhill in a big way.

Extreme earnestness and self-righteousness is on full display this morning all over Facebook. Individuals who have deemed it necessary to proselytize to their friends about the nature, value and benefits of voting are out in force today. They are pounding on their keyboard in sanctimonious glee.   

An example of the kind of Facebook message that annoys the hell out of me goes something like this:

It’s Election Day, friends. We are blessed as Americans to possess this sacred right, so please don’t waste it. Look into your heart and vote your conscience today. No matter what you political affiliation, we are all Americans. It is our duty to vote. Soldiers and patriots have given their lives so you can pull that lever today. Please be sure to exercise your right.  

Now I’m completely annoyed.

I’m not saying that this is the best way to be, but it’s the way I am.

The inane earnestness, the painful obviousness contained within the statement, the sheer weight of cliché and seeming need of some people to take an oratorical, parental, paternal or Sermon on the Mount approach to something as basic and personal as voting makes me no longer want to vote.

Instead, I find myself wanting to do exactly the opposite of what these people are telling me to do. I want to not vote in hopes of ruining their day or at least convincing them that next time, I don’t need their reminder to vote.

No one needs a reminder to vote.

Everyone knows it’s Election Day.

Anyone who turns on a television or a radio or a computer or drives down the street or speaks to a friend on the telephone knows that today is Election Day.

We all know that today is the day to vote.

I can only assume that the person who feels the need to employ this level of self-righteous earnestness in an effort to convince a friend to vote must live in some kind of pious, self-satisfied bubble. Unfortunately, they have poked their heads out of their bubble long enough today to annoy me.

Now I don’t want to vote. The fundamental truth that I do not like to be told what to do has been activated, and I must now decide if I can purposefully not vote and (just as important) tell everyone that I decided not to vote.

I consider the second condition by which I decide whether to actively not do what I have been told:

Failure to comply will not result in any serious negative consequences.

In the grand scheme of things, this is probably true as well. While every vote counts, it is unlikely that my vote will determine the fate of any political race. It is possible for me not to vote today and have no election result changed in any way.

So now I am seriously thinking about not voting. In fact, the idea of not voting as a direct result of a friend’s earnest appeal to vote warms me inside. I smile. I discover a skip in my step. My heart soars.

I was told to vote, so now I am not going to vote.

Like I said, this is not the best way to be, but it’s me.

But here’s the problem:

I want to vote.

Underneath the layers of spite and pettiness and annoyance, and beyond my extreme desire to ruin the day of an overly-earnest proselytizer lies the desire to express my political will by pulling a lever.

In my gut, I still want to vote.

In the end, it comes down to this:

Whose day would I rather ruin?

The annoying Facebook friend who seems to think that he or she is the patron saint of voting or the political candidate whose positions I despise?

Whose day is better ruined?

My vote may not alter the course of the election, but when my candidate wins, I will know that I played a role in defeating the opposition.

That would warm me inside as well. That would put a smile on my face and a skip in my step and cause my heart to soar.  

In a perfect world, there would be a way to ruin the day of the Facebook friend and the political candidate, but sadly, this is not a perfect world.

But voting for the right candidate might make it a more perfect world, though, so in the end, I choose to vote. 

I vote because I want to vote. I opened my eyes this morning looking forward to voting, and that is what I will do. I cannot allow the sanctimony and self-righteousness of Facebook friends to strip me of my opportunity to exact my political will.

Next time I’ll take my wife’s advice and just avoid Facebook altogether.

A correction, an explanation, an inexplicable bit of British advice and a forgotten ferret

A few updates on recent posts:

Last week I wrote about Paul McCartney’s recent decision to absolve Yoko Ono of any responsibility for the Beatles breakup, referring to him as a “jerk face” for having waited so long.

It turns out that McCartney has asserted this in the past, despite stories in Slate, TIME, Rolling Stone and The Daily Beast which seemed to imply otherwise.

Apologies to Paul, though I don’t think he reads my blog.

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Last week, as part of my unfair assumption series, I stated that men who own ferrets are immature and likely unemployable.

It turns out that one of my oldest friends owns a ferret. I had forgotten. Or maybe I never knew.

Either way, he has been gainfully employed for a very long time, but even he might accept the immature tag to a certain degree.

Nevertheless, I still stand by my unfair assumption as a general rule but not universal truth.

There are always exception, people. I get that.

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In terms of my recent unfair assumption that people who back into parking spots are at best irrational and more likely insane, the reaction to that post (and there was a lot) was 90/10 in favor of me. Those who disagreed, however, were vehement in their protest.

First, let me state what I thought was obvious:

There are times when backing into a parking spot makes perfect sense. You’re attending a Springsteen concert and you’re parking your car in a garage. Knowing how difficult it will be to exit after the concert, you back your car into the parking spot in hopes of making your escape a little easier.

Of course this makes sense. 

My unfair assumption (which is still unfair) was directed at those who always back into parking spots. My rationale is this:

Backing up a car is more difficult than driving forward.

If you can’t agree to this, I don’t want to argue with you. You’re already completely irrational.

Since all rationale people agree that backing up a car is more difficult than driving forward, it makes no sense to back your car into a limited, defined space and run the risk of hitting a car on either side or having to repeat the process because you ended up close to the line or another car.

When you back out of a parking space, you have the entire lane to back into, with as much room as needed. There is no danger of hitting a parked car or ending up too close to a parked car when backing out of space. The lane is wide open.

Some people claimed that backing into a space provides for a quicker exit. While I agree, I would argue that it also provides a considerably slower entry, and the time saved during the exit is miniscule compared to the time wasted backing in.

Be honest: How many times have you seen someone backing into a parking spot, only to have to pull out and begin backing up again because he or she misjudged their car’s position or did a poor job backing in the first time?

This happens all the time. And oftentimes we have to wait for the irrational driver to get it right before we can drive past him or her.  

I once worked with a woman who required three or four tries before managing to back the car into a parking spot, and she did this every single day for the twelve years that I worked with her. She, too, claimed that backing in allowed for a quicker exit, but the time wasted backing in and out of the parking spot every day was astounding.

One of my UK readers wrote:

In the UK, driving schools you get taught to back into a parking spot whenever possible. In fact, my instructor used to say “Don’t be a nosy parker!” so that I’d remember!

I am still awaiting a reason for this insanity.

Introduction conundrum

There a line in the rock opera, Rent, in which a character introduces herself by saying, “They call me Mimi.”

I kind of like that. Do you think I could get away with introducing myself in the same way?

“They call me Matt.”

Yes?

Small world indeed.

On Saturday I ran into Nicole, a woman who from New Hampshire who I met two years ago at a literary retreat in Vermont. Since meeting, we have gotten to know each other through Twitter, and we attended a second retreat together last year.

She was in Connecticut (my home state) attending the wedding of a college friend from New York and a man from England.

I was the DJ for the wedding. The couple chose a wedding venue that recommends my DJ company to their clients.

It really is a small world.

Nuzzle!

It’s not uncommon for my daughter to demand a cuddle when she is upset. In fact, it’s quite common. A cuddle is one of the two most frequently used strategies that she uses to calm herself when she is upset.

The other is putting herself into a timeout. Clara has been in dozens of timeouts in her three years on this planet, but we have yet to be the instigators of a single timeout.

She always initiates it first.

Both strategies are great (and much better than her tantrum strategy, which never ends well), but I always prefer the cuddle and am happy to oblige.

Yesterday she took this strategy one step further by demanding a nuzzle.

“Daddy! Nuzzle!”

Nuzzle?

I can’t imagine where she learned this word, but I was once more than happy to oblige.

 

No eggs. No sneak attacks. No cemeteries. But joy nonetheless.

Halloween has not been fun for me in a long time.

As a child, I spent years trick-or-treating and enjoyed every minute of it. When I was fairly young, my parents stopped accompanying me and my siblings on our Halloween adventures. This allowed us to cover an enormous amount of ground, stay out later than was advisable and verbally assault the woman on our street who gave out sandwich bags full of walnuts or homemade rice crispy squares without fear of parental disapproval. Our candy hauls were unwieldy and the independence that we were granted was exhilarating.

Then I became a teenager and the attempts to accumulate Halloween treats ended and the tricking part of Halloween took over. It was a glorious time in my childhood, filled with strings of toilet paper, countless cartons of eggs, hide-and-go-seek in the cemetery and elaborate plans to frighten unsuspecting children and their even less suspecting parental escorts. We hid in trees, buried ourselves in leaf piles, crawled under parked cars and did everything we could to put the fright back in Halloween.

While it’s true that I was known to egg a house from time to time (including the home of the high school science teacher on more than one occasion), most of my eggs were reserved for friends and the unfortunate passersby.

My hometown became so ravaged by this destructive behavior that the local grocery store stopped selling eggs on Halloween in order to help curb the mayhem.

Halloween essentially became a time when children and teenagers ruled the night.

Then I grew too old to continue this behavior, though it admittedly took much longer than it should have, and Halloween transformed again into a evening of costume parties, scary movies and midnight trips to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

All excellent ways to spend a Halloween, but not nearly as fun as being perched precariously on a tree limb, firing eggs at unsuspecting targets.

Last night the unabashed joy of Halloween returned for the first time as we took Clara and Charlie trick-or-treating.

Though this was not Clara’s first Halloween, it was the first year that she fell in love with trick-or-treating and all the trappings of Halloween. She was leading the charge, demanding that we find more houses to visit and more candy to collect.

It was so much fun to watch.

Ironically, Halloween almost didn’t happen for us. Our little contrarian (I have no idea where she gets this) initially said that she had no desire to trick-or-treat and refused to even consider donning a costume. Then she made her first poopy on the potty, declared it, “Beautiful! Not yucky at all!” and everything changed. She ran upstairs, donned a tutu, pronounced herself a ballerina and was ready to go.

Though she asked to be carried up the first set of stairs and would not ring the first doorbell, by the third house was pulling me along, saying at one point, “I love Halloween so much, Daddy! This is fun!” She was enthusiastic, giggly, polite and genuinely excited about every part of Halloween.

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Then there was the moment when she turned to Elysha after being handed a bag of pretzels and asked, “Why did she give me pretzels?”

Like father, like daughter.

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Finally, it was Charlie’s first Halloween, though all this meant was that he was stuffed into a dinosaur costume and dragged around the neighborhood. But by the time we arrived home, he had mastered his impression of a dinosaur.

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Unfair assumption #5

People who back into parking spots are at best irrational and more likely insane.

This might be the least unfair of the assumptions that I have written about so far.

Unfair assumption #4

Men who own ferrets are immature and likely unemployable.

I have no such assumptions about women who own ferrets, probably because I have never met a woman who owned a ferret.

The lack of female ferret ownership may say a lot about post-adolescent ferret ownership in general.

Still, I know. It’s a terribly unfair assumption.

But what adult wants to own a ferret?

More ways to die

I’m allergic to bees. They have killed me once already.

As a result, I avoid them at all costs. Sometimes people will tell me to sit still and relax when a bee is flying around me. “If you don’t bother it, it won’t sting you.”

First, I was not bothering the bee that killed me. I was minding my own business when it stung me and caused my respiration and heart to stop, so that argument is stupid. 

Second, I’d like to see you try to sit still and relax when someone is waving a gun in your face, because that is what it is like to have a bee flying around mine. Bees are like bullets to me. Both can kill.

Apparently bees don’t have to sting me in order to kill me. My exceptionally sincere or incredibly cruel friend sent me this CNN story about a man who fell off a cliff and died after being chased by bees.

Not only do I have to worry about the bee’s venom, but now I have to worry about where the bee might chase me.

If you haven’t met my wife and daughter yet, wait five minutes. It’ll happen. I promise.

My wife, Elysha, runs into Starbucks while I wait in the car with the kids. She’s gone for less than five minutes. When she returns, she has a coffee in one hand and the phone number of a woman who lives two blocks over from us in the other.

We’ll be getting together with this woman and her husband for brunch soon, no doubt.

This is my wife. Everywhere she goes, she meets people, collects names and contact information and slowly insinuates them into our lives.

I’ve recently become aware that she has passed this propensity onto our daughter, Clara. Whether this trait was passed via nature or nurture is impossible to discern, but whenever Clara sees another child on the playground, in a restaurant, at the museum or anywhere else she goes, she immediately introduces herself and attempts to acquire the child’s name.

In many cases, these children are unprepared for this unexpected inquiry and flounder when asked to produce their names. Sometimes Clara will look to me and say something like, “That little boy doesn’t want to tell me his name! Why won’t he tell me his name?”

On Saturday we were playing on a wooden train outside a corn maze when I caught one of these moments on video:

Last night was Halloween, and the circumstances were no different. At each house on our street, Clara rang the bell, shouted “Trick or treat!” and collected her candy. Then we stood around for about three minutes, waiting for Elysha to finish her conversation with the neighbors, some of whom she barely knows.

Eventually, Clara and I said goodbye and proceeded without her, knowing that if we waited for Elysha, we might be trick or treating until midnight.

I’m not saying that my wife’s propensity for meeting people is a bad thing. We have made some amazing friends thanks to her willingness to engage strangers in conversation.

Of course, not everyone she meets and invites to brunch is a winner.

And there are moments when I just want to get from point A to point B without collecting three new phone numbers, friending two new people on Facebook and following someone new on Twitter in the process.

She’s been known to slow me down from time to time.

But I take the good with the bad. It’s mostly good.

Mostly.