Photo credit: MJM Photography via Flickr Creative Commons
This is not a political post. It is a pro-people post. As in – People! Enough of the in-your-face political ads already!
Our family is SO looking forward to when this election madness will be over! I love a good debate as much as the next gal. In fact, probably more so because that’s just what makes me who I am. However, living in this purple state during this very heated presidential race is starting to drive me us all a bit insane.
First, there’s all the junk in the mail. At first I was like, oooo, I feel special – these nice brochures were clearly very expensive and they decided to send them to little ol’ us? I started saving them and carefully wrapping them up (not folding them) to put in the kids’ scrap books. ”Honey, you were only 4 years old when Mitt Romney ran against President Obama! Here are some souvenirs you can bring to your class for show-and-tell.”
Now I dread going to the mailbox. I’ve begun ripping them up. Straight to the trash they go. Good campaign donors’ money gone to waste. What a pity.
Then there’s all the ads on TV. I only get, like, 10 minutes to watch TV after the kids go to sleep – it’s a treat I look forward to, plus it’s precious couple time together. We try to watch a favorite show — and are rudely interrupted by a political ad. We try to change the channel, and there’s yet one more different ad for the other guy saying almost the exact same thing. He sucks. No, he sucks. He’s going to ruin your children’s future. No, he’s going to ruin your children’s future. We get it – boys, you’re both pretty!
The icing on the cake is all the pollster calls. At first, we felt special – like, ooooh, the pollsters want the opinions of little ol’ us? We’re up for a good political survey any day of the week. That is – surveys that are well written and don’t ask clearly biased questions. They were fine until they started trying to gauge what itty bitty tiny things they could promote about the candidate to make us like him more or want to vote for him.
“What if he said he believed in unicorns? Would you be more likely to vote for him?”
“How important is the length of his tie in whether you find him a desirable candidate?”
Good grief.
But now, it’s personal. The pollster calls are scaring our children.
One night we got 5 calls in a row from the same ghost number. Some are tricky and have an 804 area code. Most have a totally invented-looking area code. We transitioned from answering the phone to letting it ring. The kids (ages 4 and 2) would ask – “Who dat calling mama? Why you not answer?” So we started blocking the calls. When one of the blocked numbers calls, it still rings once which freaks the kids out. My two-and-a-half-year-old says “Mama, me scared!”
The ghost calls are scary. Pollsters, enough already. You’re scaring our children. We know who we’re voting for and neither the length of his tie nor his belief in unicorns will sway us. Not everybody in a purple state is undecided… but thanks for all the mailed mementos for our children’s future show-and-tells in social studies class.
November 6th cannot get here soon enough.
About Mary Beth Cox
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