Blisters, Banners and Bribes

Due to an embarrassing foot injury, the plan for Saturday had been to take it easy. Instead, I found myself marching for miles, holding up one end of a candidate’s banner in the Birch Bay parade.

The joke after was that I could now add “mediocre banner carrier” to my resume, and that was being generous. I did a poor job matching the stride of my fellow banner carrier and an even poorer job of centering us. You’re supposed to smile and wave to the crowd, but a) the foot hurt and b) I’m just not that much of a multitasker.

In my limited defense, there were a lot of future voters to bribe. I was also holding a bucket of candy and tossing it to children along the route. The goal was to toss one piece per kid, to avoid a repeat of those chimpanzee experiments with too few bananas.

And somewhere along the way, two thoughts occurred to me. First, I had never even thought of doing anything like this before. Second, I hadn’t endorsed the guy whose banner I was carrying. More on this tomorrow…