Nick’s journey into the world of adulting has certainly been coming on fast and furious of late.
Today marks yet another milestone as he added another title to his credit:
REGISTERED VOTER.
Those of us who have been voting for years may well take it for granted but for him to walk through the doors of the precinct and into the elections hall as a registered voter was quite a breathtaking experience.
After all, it was only a little over 19 years ago we welcomed him into the world and now here he is casting a ballot and taking a stand.
I have to say it was lovely being able to share that moment with him of walking from the car park through the gauntlet of political operatives (who for once didn’t even try to lobby either of us) and into the precinct proper.
I had given him an overview of what he might well expect about the process: going to the queue corresponding to our last name to be identified and get the sticker for the ballot release form, going to the ballot table to actually get the ballot, then off to the booths to mark it up and finally slide it through the optical scanner.
And by and large that’s how it went…
What I kind of forgot to warn him about was that this precinct really loves first time voters.
*REALLY* loves them!
So when Nicholas made it through stating his name and address for the record, the nice lady in charge of our polling book asked him a rather innocent sounding question:
“Are you a first time voter?”
Of course, Nicholas answered in the affirmative at which point she yells out “we’ve got a first time voter here!” and the rest of the poll workers start joining in.
I truly wish I had my camera on Nicholas to catch the look on his face which was truly priceless…he seemed truly perplexed and caught between the urge to run like hell or stay in place and soil his britches. It really looked like it was going to be a photo finish between those two outcomes.
However, photographing voters in the election hall is actually prohibited by NC General Statutes §163-166.3(b) without the voter’s consent and the consent of the chief judge. Given Nicholas’ resistance to photos in the car park, I didn’t think that was going to happen.
So, in the spirit of trying to be helpful to him…I couldn’t help but wonder out loud if we could have a “dance around the virgins” like they do at the “Rocky Horror Picture Show”.
Nicholas is looking at me like he’d sooner want to hang about with Judas Iscariot…a real thirty pieces of silver job!
But the poll workers that heard me (which was pretty much everyone manning the voter books) about died laughing and Nick made a quick beeline for the ballot table.
So yes, I’ll cop to being utterly evil in that moment.
But the alternative was to break down in tears at how proud I am of him for taking yet another step in the realm of adulting and voting his ballot for the very first time.
And I’m for darned sure not the only one proud of him for doing so.
I honestly don’t care who or what he votes for nor does it really matter to me if he happens to agree with me politically or not.
That’s not the point.
It is his privilege and his right to vote his conscience as he sees fit…one that’s been paid for many times over in the most precious of currency.
We left for the house in separate vehicles (he’d met me there after he got off work at Leith Toyota and I’d dropped off Katie and Alex and Mistletoe) and he did have a decent lead which evaporated at the New Hope stoplight.
But in the short journey to that intersection, there were tears…tears of joy and pride.
And I’m not in the least ashamed to admit to it. 🙂
