voting and friends

over the many, many years of my friendship with my best friend from high school (and yes, that's a long time since i'm turning 34 next week), i've always attempted to get him to care about voting. and it's always been an ongoing issue since he moves constantly and so before an election i always remind and become like a nagging wife who always brings up the thing the husband never wants to get around to.

we've argued over whether voting mattered, whether there was time, whether he wanted people to know where he was, whether he wanted people to know who he was, whether he believed in the system at all, whether he was a democrat or a green or a nobody, and just how much he hated politics altogether. and many times he hasn't voted. sometimes he has, because i pushed the issue with him. but it almost always felt like something i was pushing and he just did it for me.

this year is different. and wonderfully so. this year, he's the one pushing. he hates bush so much that he's constantly worried that he won't be able to vote for some reason. he's asking me to help him get registered, confirm his registration, and so forth. i've gotten voice mails where he's literally yelling about how he's worried about not getting to vote in november and begging me to help him make sure he does. and this has been months before november. i don't have to remind him at all. he's become more interested than i could have ever fathomed, particularly knowing who he is and his disinterest in these types of things in general. listening to his voice mails and his great concerns on the phone, as well as my family's and other friends' concerns and worries and interest in voting this year, makes me smile that they are interested, that they know they can come to me with questions, that they will vote, and that i don't have to really nag this year.

bush has helped me get my friends registered to vote and interested in voting, months before i would have ran to them with a nagging reminder. thank you for that, bush; possibly the only thing i will ever thank you for.