I nearly waited out the entirety of October to purchase the 55-count package of miniature candy. Fun-sized.
It wasn’t so much an impulse buy as a studied test of willpower.
I had cruised by the grocery store aisle where it sat since August — camouflaged by near identical bags that offered various piece-counts — and each trip talked myself down from the desire to stock up.
The 35-piece-count bag would have sufficed, but the chance of running out before Halloween is one I wouldn’t set before a prediction market. The 110-piece-count bag, on the other hand, is just asking for trouble …sampling while waiting in the checkout line, perhaps.
And if that were to happen, what would stop a person from clawing out handfuls of individually wrapped chocolate delicacies from the bag, now torn stem to stern and sitting on the passenger seat as that person drives home?
Won’t power?
As I sat in the driveway, listening to the last words of a broadcast while unwrapping “just one” chocolate-covered, caramel-layered biscuit, lifting it to my lips.
I wondered why this feels so necessary.
I have waged this exact battle for years to varying degrees of success.
Buying early. Buying late. Choosing candy I don’t like. Learning there’s really no such thing. Then figuring out that the whole exercise has kept you from overthinking Christmas, which will no doubt jettison in wearing their green and red wrappers before these orange and black-wrapped pieces have gone … to my hips.
It’s not that big a deal. Why would I begrudge myself such a small indulgence? Literally a quarter of a standard serving size/ Why would I call it out or berate myself?
And that’s when I realized I’d been listening to some random opinion on voting as I stuffed my face with a second and third bite of candy.
The woman was lecturing her radio audience on how voting shouldn’t be easy. How it should be a literal exercise … making you leave your house … or prove that you can’t … and therefore in need of some form of dispensation to “mail it in.” She wondered why we should not require an ID?
Is there anyone who has already registered to vote and whose name is included in the vetted system who does NOT have access to a driver’s license with a flag or a star emblazoned upon it that will somehow confer the truthfulness of a person’s civic status?
Will making bigger hoops and longer mazes to navigate make for a more perfect union? Why should we err on the side of disenfranchising voters? If we are keen to say our soldiers have fought for our right to a democracy, shouldn’t we be enjoying that benefit more and fighting to exercise it a whole lot less?
As if having a say in our government was merely a privilege – like this next piece of candy I am about to pop into my mouth – and not a right granted by citizenship. Or that such rights should always involve more hardship than efficiency. More bitter than sweet?
I’d just like to thank you for voting … however and whenever you got to the polls.
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