This is a Halloween story, because it takes place on Halloween, of course. It is also a GOTV (get out the vote) story. So it is scary as hell. Okay, not really. It is actually pretty dinky. But this story means a lot to me.
Please follow beneath the spooky orange thing (well, it scares the bejeebers out of me)...
When I was in junior high school, it was a presidential election year. My frend John and I were interested in politics. John's dad was always running for something. He always lost (up to that point) and both of our families were liberal (we were brought up right).
We were both just thirteen years old, and that is apparently the cutoff age for Halloweening (that is trick-or-treating, I am not sure if the former is Pittsburghese or not, but just in case...). None of the other kids in our class were going Halloweening. Actually, most were dumbfounded when we told them what we were doing.
I had an idea. John really liked it. We would go Halloweening and campaigning at the same time. We could make masks of the candidates (this was right before the latex mask craze) and go door to door and get out the vote, as well as trying to persuade voters to our side. John's dad liked the idea, too (really important, to get free propaganda to hand out from local Democratic headquarters).
We made our own masks. Believe it or not, almost everyone recognized who we were supposed to be. We wore our church suits (the only ones we had). I was the presidential candidate; John was the VP.
Imagine, your doorbell rings, or there is a knock. You open the door, and there are two obnoxious preadolescents in cheap suits sprinkled with campaign buttons, thrusting out campaign literature in one hand and a brown paper bag covered with bumper stickers in the other.
The kids in our class did not believe we would do this. We did, and we saw a few of the guys we thought would make fun of us. The first one answered the door, and started yelling for his parents. "It's them, I told you they would do it! Come look!" He did not make fun of us. None of them did. Ever.
When we were walking back to John's house, with our bulging bags of candy, we were mobbed by a roving band of really cute girls. I mean, really cute. And popular. They were too old to go Halloweening, so they were out, allegedly to watch the kids and see their costumes. But when they saw us, well, we got mobbed. They told us it was cool, what we were doing. They asked us for candy, of course we agreed. And then they took all our candy. We didn't mind.
John and I walked back to his house with our empty bags. We were two happy dudes. It turns out that being politically active is cool. Who knew? The guys thought we were gutsy and the girls, well, for one brief, shining moment, we were the coolest nerds in school.
This was my first moment of political activism. And it was incredible, one of the happiest memories of my life.
By the way, our candidates lost.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This diary is dedicated to John, my best friend from first grade onward, who grew up to be an activist, working with the Hunger Action Coalition in Pittsburgh, and who died, suddenly, at age 32. Just knowing him made me a better person.