Super Tuesday is upon us, folks.

Well, not here in North Carolina.  Here, we get to wait to vote until May while the rest of you duke it out and determine which candidates stay in the race.  Am I bitter about this?  Perhaps.  Enough to wish I lived in New Hampshire and were subject to a political siege every two years or so (because, let’s face it, election year lasts way more than a year in those early primary states)?  Definitely not.

At any rate, this primary race has been nothing short of spectacular people watching and fear mongering.  Some of it legitimate, some whipped up by other camps in the usual political fashion.

But I’m not going to talk about that.  Nope.

Ok, well, I’ll talk about it briefly.  Obviously if I’m concerned with primaries in an election year with an incumbent Democratic President, you can conclude that I’m a registered Republican.  You would be correct.

However, I’m not completely sold on any of the options available.  At all.  Romney’s plans for health care scare me, Santorum’s views on women’s reproductive issues make me want to deliver a good old-fashioned metaphorical (you hear me, Secret Service? METAPHORICAL!!!) throat-punch to his sweater-vested self, and IMHO, Gingrich is un-electable in a general election.  Ron Paul doesn’t even deserve mention.

And being a fiscal conservative, I’m not an Obama fan.

So while we bide our time until the convention, let me tell you what should really frighten you: your electorate.**

Having spent the past 5 years largely in the company of people who only talk to me in monosyllables and shrieks, I’ve been people watching (and listening) more intently than usual.  My conclusion is that you should have the heebie jeebies about the people who will be flocking to the polls.

 

 Meet your electorate

 

Pickles

One sunny day Mark and I had a fast food craving and hit the drive-thru at Wendy’s.  We had all our windows down and were enjoying the sunshine.  We paid for our order and had to wait for it to be prepared.  In the meantime, sitting there at the window, we could hear the guy in the car behind us as he placed his order.

“Uh, yeah, I’d like two hamburgers, two fries, and a single with cheese, eighty-six the pickles.”

The girl working the register asked him to repeat his order, which he did.  Then she turned and shouted into the kitchen, “Tanya!  Some fool out here wants 86 pickles on his burger!”

“What?” Tanya yelled back.

“I SAID, some fool out here wants 86 pickles on his burger.”

“I don’t even know if we have 86 pickles.”

Mark and I were shaking with laughter, trying desperately not to look in the window.

“Should I tell her?”  I hissed to him.

“No!” he whispered.  “No way!”

Inside, register girl kept yelling at Tanya.  “I mean, why’s he got to have 86 pickles?  Why not 85?  Why not 80?  Does he really want us to count out 86 pickles?”

Tanya hollered back, “I’m not counting out 86 pickles.  I’ll just give him all we got.”

I bet they vote.

 

 The GI bug

Recently, when I was sitting in a doctor’s office waiting room, I found myself near a woman and her daughter.  The woman was leafing through a medical magazine and they were idly chatting, but she caught my attention when I heard her ask her daughter,  “Hey, do you know what a GI bug is?”

“A GI bug?  You mean like GI Joe?”

“Yeah, see, that’s what I thought.  Somebody told me the other day Sammy had the GI bug and I thought that was strange, because Sammy ain’t in the army, so he go gettin a soldier bug?  But it turns out that the GI bug is just a stomach bug!”

The daughter looked perplexed. “Why’d they call it that, then?”

“I don’t know.  Damn stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” the mother responded.

 

 My autopsy

My father practised oral surgery for many years, and he always had a great story to tell.  The one that’s stuck with me the most, though, is when his secretary came into his office one day and said, laughing so hard she could barely speak, “Mr. Smith just called.  He said he needs to cancel his autopsy for tomorrow.”

My father, ever the pragmatist, said, “Well, what did you tell him?”

“I told him we’d be happy to reschedule his biopsy when it was more convenient.”

 

The scary thing is that there are plenty more where these stories came from.

So I’d like to know: what do you think of our electorate?  Has anybody given you 86 pickles on your burger recently?