An Anticipation And A Little Ten Year Old Girl Meeting A Republican

A short story on the privilege of voting and never get angry with family or friends, if they do not vote for the ones you are choosing.

So if nothing arrives on Monday in the regular mail or the email, we can still hope for something to come on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or even Saturday. All week, we have what I call “the anticipation happening”. We anticipate a fine event with our name attached to it. Then if it does not happen, we can always think about two weeks from now or one month from now. Of course, everyone involved in the coming Tuesday of the election may be thinking they will be happy if the outcome arrives to them in what they wanted. This was written about 5 years ago.

People involved in the election are quite antsy waiting for their hopeful outcome to be in their corner. People who voted for them feel somewhat the same way.

When I was a kid, everyone in the neighborhood was a Democrat. I really did not know what that meant. We had a next door neighbor Anne who was a devoted Republican. I did not know what that meant either. One afternoon, the whole block was a twitter, because Anne had a guest arriving at her house. He was Theodore R. Mc Keldin, running for I believe for mayor and he was something they called a Republican. Anne was alone in her political choice and everyone was stunned he was making an appearance in our modest block of homes.

We kids felt like we were awaiting a movie star to descend on our street. The adults thought Anne was a jerk to have a Republican come to our low income neighborhood, where everyone was a Democrat.

I remember a quite tall man with a nice voice arriving and he had a handful of cards with his name and picture on it and he gave all of us kids a card. We looked upon it as if he was famous and we were the recipient of something special that we would revere all our lives-his photo with an autograph on it.

We were about in the age group of nine on up. He went door to door and gave out his pictures and asked the adults to please vote for him. They were not going to, but still were courteous and took his card and then threw it away in the trash can. My girlfriends and I kept the photos because we realized he was kind of famous and would be more famous if our parents voted for him and he became mayor or governor. He did become mayor of Baltimore City in 1943-47 so he was probably campaigning when he gave us kids the autographed card. He also became governor of Maryland in 1951-59. So there I was at age nine or so in the presence of the future mayor and governor. Anne got lots of disgusted neighbors to even think she was a Republican. Things change, we change and times change.

Whenever I think of Anne, I think of Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin way back in about 1942 or so and that he became mayor the following year. People talked about him being there, like he was either a celebrity in the making or a not so nice person because he was a Republican. I can say now, that he was then to us nine and ten year old neighborhood kids, a man who was a politician and a famous personality. We kept our little cards he gave us because we felt he was a prominent person who would go far. There were no TV ads in those days, because there was no TV. The only derisive remarks were by the neighbors who were constant Democrats and the kids listened to their parents and their remarks about him with interest.

So for this election on a next Tuesday, may we all have a good week and may we find happiness we seek and we will be happy if the candidate of our choice and our voting wins. We will know that we voted and practiced the right we have in this country to choose the one we think is the best suited one to govern.

Four years ago, I sent a commentary on one who was running for high office to an email pal of mine in California. She was originally from England and they were citizens here. She got very insulted with me and said she was competent enough to know who to vote for. She ceased writing to me, after being an email pal for about five years. She always said she loved me more as her younger sister than her real biological sister. She stopped loving me four years ago because she thought I was trying to influence her vote. I was not; I was trying to tell her who I thought the better candidate. There was no trying to influence her; I thought since we were ‘sisters’, we could have a nice dialogue on this topic. I heard from her once in these last four years when I thought I would try to be email pals again. She wrote me a short note, updating me on her family and grandsons and I responded and I guess the email went off route in space and I never heard again. So be it for sisters.

Go out and do your civic and country duty and vote for your choice and do not get angry with anyone, a relative or a friend over whom to vote for. We all want the best for us and our country. Let us find happiness in what we seek during election time next time.

This happened again for the past year during November 2016. I went and sent a short article sent to me about the current presidential election and she sent me a nasty email comment "to never send anything like that because she deletes them." So I answered her a snippy answer too. I doubt we will not talk again. This is fine with me. I guess being for a Republican is not her thing and she does not like people who do. No great anticipation for her when other people vote for someone she dislikes. You know what? I do not like her.

Our anticipation happening is upon us.