VAMPIRES

Well, yesterday was Halloween and tomorrow is Election Day, and I don’t know which is scarier.

Anyway, Halloween put me to mind of vampires. No, not the kind that they show in the movies, but the kind that you run into day after day, probably without knowing it, most of the time.

I used to have a friend. I’ll call her Madame X. Madame X was one of the sweetest people I ever met. She seemed to be sympathetic, caring, and kind. She was intelligent and quick-witted. As a matter of fact, I had no complaints with Madame X until I noticed a tiny little problem: She had a tendency, once given an opening, to hold the floor endlessly. I was amazed by the sheer volume of her monologues. They could go on and on for so long – and there was never any question or pause included in her speech, so there was no way for me to respond. The best I could do was to interject such utterances as, “Is that so?!” and “Oh, my!” and “Wow!” and “Hmmmm” and “I see.” I would do this to remind her that I was there. At first I thought my friend was just a little lonely and in need of a sympathetic ear. But after a while, it sank in. This was her way of relating. She really wasn’t interested in hearing from the other side of the table. On the contrary.

I began to notice my reaction to this. We would be at a restaurant for a pleasant lunch, and after three minutes of the preliminaries, “Hi-how-are-you?” and “Fine-How-are-you?”, she was off and running. Two hours later, I would find myself nearly comatose, falling asleep in my capuccino, drained, unable to move, and dying to be somewhere – anywhere- other than where I was. I was ruined for the day, incapable of any meaningful activity.

Finally, I had to separate myself from Madame X once and for all. It was difficult and painful, and I did it with a heavy heart, not wanting to hurt her, but not knowing any other way to protect myself.

I wouldn’t bother to tell you about Madame X, except that she is only one example among many I have experienced in my life. I’m not sure whether the explanation is that the “vampire” is secretly angry (thus explaining the sensation of having been attacked after having endured one of these marathons) or whether she is simply depressed and needs to “spill” for relief. Both of these explanations seem plausible to me. But they don’t change the outcome.

The thing about vampires is that you have to run from them. Run like hell. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether a vampire is really good at heart. Allow yourself a smidgeon of rudeness. Make something up. Say you suddenly have a headache. Say you hear your mother calling. Say you just remembered you had a dentist’s appointment. Anything.

Oh, one or two encounters now and then with a vampire might just leave you a quart or two low temporarily, but a quart here, a quart there, and pretty soon you’re drained dry.

Well, on to Election Day. (Clearly, the scarier of the two days). Don’t forget to vote!

SOME THOUGHTS ON VOTING

Two weeks until the election. I’ll bet you’re as tired as I am of hearing about it. I think maybe one of the reasons so many people fail to vote is that by the time the election rolls around, they’re convinced that they have already voted – over and over again.

Think about it. We keep hearing the poll results from the media. It’s like checking your pulse every five minutes. Is my heart beating now? What’s the rate? Will it go on, or will it suddenly stop, say, in the next five to ten minutes? And if my pulse is racing, what are the long-term ramifications? Am I temporarily excited or am I about to have a coronary? Yes, I would love to stop checking my pulse, but when you’re talking about pulse rate, five minutes can be an eternity. I must check it, again and again, so that I will know with certainty what will happen in the next five minutes. After all, the pulse rate today, maybe blood pressure tomorrow. Insane.

From the time I was a little girl I heard my father saying that the electorate in this country was complacent, lazy, underinvolved. I always thought it was true. Now, I wonder if the truth is just the opposite. We are overinvolved. We have been systematically desensitized by a flood of media hype. It doesn’t really matter where your own particular brand of politics happens to fall; you, my fellow citizen, have been numbed by an avalanche of overinformation. (Not, of course, accurate information. Here, the media has given us a word for the phenomenon: “spin”).

The politicians, of course, are equally to blame when it comes to spin. After all, if public opinion hands you a lemon, you must make lemonade. Perhaps one of the most famous (and pitiful) examples of spin is, “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is”. Yes, if you’re caught with your pants down (literally) you have to spin till you’re dizzy. But Bill Clinton did not invent spin, and, although he was a brilliant politician, he wasn’t actually a master of spin. (That’s why it was so pitiful). I have much better spinmeisters I could point to, but that might make me look partisan, so I’ll pass. Besides, what difference does it make? Everyone does it. It is the political equivalent of wearing make-up. You go for the illusion of being natural. No one actually expects you to be natural. And whether you favor the Tammy Faye approach or the Christie Brinkley approach, everyone knows you wear make-up. Can you name one supermodel who doesn’t wear make-up? Aha! That’s my point.

So, here is what I intend to do for the next two weeks. I intend not to watch television news. I will watch “I Love Lucy”reruns. I will write my blog. I will read another book in the Mitford series. I will stay close to my loved ones. I will clean house and make dinner. I have already gone over my ballot and I know how I will vote. Unless something earth-shaking happens between now and November 2nd, there is no more information I need. So, hopefully, by November 2nd I won’t be too burnt-out to vote. I will remember that I haven’t really voted before in this election, although I may have dreamt or imagined that I voted in this election hundreds of times.

I hope you will vote, too. In real life. On November 2nd. Even if it seems like you’ve “been there, done that”. You haven’t.