Caught Red-Handed (Or Blue-Handed)
A Lawn Order Story
Several years ago during election season, you couldn't drive down a single street in our town without seeing lawn signs. The number of lawn signs some people managed to cram onto their lawns was very impressive. I'll bet many of them were Tetris enthusiasts.
I always wondered how neighbors got along who had opposing candidates' signs right next to each other. Do they speak? Are they amicable? I hope so.
I personally would never put a political lawn sign on my front lawn, for so many reasons. People get offended these days. No one needs to know how I vote. Stuff like that. Having these giant signs on one's front lawn seems so ambitious and so brave.
Driving home from work one very windy afternoon, I noticed something on our front lawn. We lived in a corner house, and this thing was right on the corner by the curb for everyone at the intersection to see. It was a political lawn sign for the candidate I did not intend to vote for.
Did someone sneak it there just to tick me off? No, the wind blew it there, and it landed upright! It was a little crooked, like it had been campaigning all afternoon and was tired. I was both embarrassed and, yes, ticked off.
I nearly jumped out of the car before I'd even turned it off and rushed across the yard, my high heels aerating the lawn. I couldn't get to that sign fast enough. Please let no one have seen this! I pulled it up out of the moist grass and walked it back to my neighbor's lawn, where it belonged. I hoped it wouldn't try to escape her lawn again, because then I'd have to give it a stern talking-to.
My terror that people would think I was on the wrong team was soon outdone by another election faux pas.
During the primary elections, I stood in a long line at my polling place in a high school gym. I gingerly made my way up to the sign-in table, hoping the whole process would be quick so I wouldn't be late for work. Because it was a primary election, I had to declare which primary I was voting in. When I told the elderly poll worker the party primary I would be voting in, he looked up with amusement and surprise. Then he announced, like a bingo caller, to the entire gym, "Oh, we don't see a lot of those in here!"
He was probably the one guy in the building who should have at least tried to stay neutral. But there we were. Everyone looked up to see the outlier. I hadn't felt that many eyes on me in a gym since I was picked last for dodgeball. Even the basketball hoops seemed to be judging me. I felt like I'd just walked into a Cleveland Browns bar in a Steelers jersey. Over a primary ballot.
I slipped behind the little cardboard privacy walls, which felt a bit pointless now that my diary had been read aloud to the entire gym. Somewhere, a crooked, tired lawn sign was laughing at me.
I cast my ballot and put on my "I Voted" sticker, which at that point felt less like a gold star and more like a scarlet letter. Then I drove to work. By the time I got there, I'm fairly sure not one person in that gym was still thinking about me. They had their own ballots, their own jobs to get to, and probably their own runaway lawn signs.
That's the funny thing about worrying what people think. We sprint across lawns and shrink in gym lines over moments that feel enormous to us and barely register with anyone else. Most people are far too busy wondering what we think of them.
So this Election Day, wear your sticker. And if the wind delivers a surprise to your lawn, walk it home kindly. Whatever's on our lawns, we all live on the same windy street.
