Have You Voted?

The voting conversation always manages to amuse me, even though it always begins and ends exactly the same way. It's as if everyone time someone asks me the fabled question of "have you voted yet?", it has suddenly become my birthday and someone has just bought me my own personal space ship and a vile of immortality juice. Seriously, I get that excited.

It happened yesterday when I was coming out of Abnormal Psychology. A girl was handing out fliers about voting for someone, and apparently, I come off as a person who gives a shit. So, like a cruise missile with only one target, the woman comes walking right up to me and shoves a flier into my chest. "Vote for so and so!" she says.

Being the gentleman I am, I take the flier, pretend to read it while noting the very interesting colour and pattern scheme used to attract the idiots, and then look back up to her fake-smiling face and say calmly "I don't vote."

Had I not been in a public setting, I think she would have killed me then and there. I'm assuming she had heard that excuse a lot today, and it was really starting to piss her off. She exploded, yelling at me in a hushed rage: "You need to vote! This country is built on the choices of the people, and if you don't take an interest, we're going to be stuck with some idiot making all of our decisions! And who will be to blame? People like you, who didn't take the half-hour needed to go and cast a vote! This is America!"

That was my cue. Time for me to act! "I'm not American," I said, calmly, though inside my body was just bubbling with joy.

"Well, you're going to school here, so you're a citizen right!"

"Nope. I'm a permanent resident. I can't vote."

She stared at me silently for several seconds. Then, extremely embarrassed, she apologized for her rude outbreak and started blushing. I didn't say it was O.K. That would be counterproductive. Instead, I smiled happily at my perfectly played trump card, and went on my merry way.

Oh, and by-the-way, I wouldn't vote even if I could.