I have a tickle in my throat
Saturday morning, I woke with a start, sprang up in bed to a different sound then the usual chirping of birds that I set as my alarm, no it was the sound of the telephone ringing!! Who the heck is calling at 5:30 in the morning?! I run to the phone in the other room hoping to turn it off before the noise woke my parents up. I picked up the phone, somehow managing to utter something of a greeting to the person on the other end. This person, was, one of my voting officers, who I could tell was a bit nervous to call me and to work, because the first thing she said to me was, “I have a tickle in my throat,” and so I looked at the phone in my hand, making sure I’m not dreaming or anything.
At elections B.C, we are devoted to ensuring the right to vote, we are the soldiers of the democratic machine, we work as a team, effectively and efficiently, but on that morning, the thing I woke up to was the loss of a team member. Shit. I was nervous enough already, being the first time, I was to take up the role of being a supervisor, but I thought nothing of it and continued. I arrived a little while later at the school, driving through the snow on the way there, snow, it’s not even November yet! It was still dark when I unloaded the car and began to set up the school gym, to turn it into a voting place, where people in the area can cast their ballot. And there was a long period of silence as I prepared this by myself, alone in the school gym, peaceful yet suspenseful.
Thankfully the rest of the crew showed up ready to work, one without the proper supplies yet it was a small hurdle compared to what was still to come. 20 minutes to go… voting starts at 8:00am sharp, and the supplies arrived, all I need to do now is give my team the correct voting books, which contained all the voters registered in the area. However, this did not go well, in the gym there are 4 stations where votes can be cast, and two of these station’s voting books were accidently switched. Again,shit. However, after some serious thought, I followed the procedures that have been drilled into my brain since the training session, “if you have any problems, call us” and that I did, resolving the problem, for the moment. It’ll be a problem when we count in 12 hours, I thought to myself, and that it was. But, 30 minutes in and I was enjoying myself, everything was being sort out and I could take a step back and admire the voting process, for about 5 seconds before someone had a question or problem for me to look at.
It’s 8:00 pm and the doors to the school close, it’s time to count, the boxes are opened, ballots are viewed, and numbers written down. There’s a word one could use to describe this situation that I was faced with, one could call it shitutation, an absolute gongshow if you will, “an event that proves to be a disaster, often in a fun or memorable way.” This is not quite the word I’m looking for because while being very memorable, I wouldn’t say It was fun. However, many lessons were learnt that day and I waled away a more confident young fellow. As expected, life doesn’t always go the way the you plan on it going however that’s not the main takeaway from this experience, its really that you can’t back down from any situation, especially if you’re a supervisor, and that the support form your fellow teammates, friends, family is the glue between the pages, oil between the gears, the gears of society, the gears of democracy.
Have a nice evening, and as always, stay calm.
