7 Things That are Harder Than Standing in Line All Day to Vote

Don’t wake up Wednesday and think, oh, fudge. I should have voted but the line was too long.

Scared by the long lines at the polling stations?

Think your arthritic feet will hurt too much if you wait several hours to vote?

Don’t want to waste a few hours casting a vote when you have so many things on your to-do list? Like rotating your tires and catching up on decluttering your e-mail inbox?

Well, I’m an ordinary person who doesn’t like pain or inconvenience any more than anyone else, say a person just like you.

So just to put voting in perspective, let me list some things I’ve gone through and survived that are harder than waiting in line to vote.

1. I walked a marathon for 7 hours to raise money for The Leukemia Society. At times, I was in so much misery I actually cried and had to tell myself to stop because I didn’t have enough energy to walk and bawl at the same time. Yet, when I crossed the finish line, every moment of discomfort was worth an accomplishment I’d have for the rest of my life. Plus, I’d raised a lot of money for a very good cause.
2. I had open-heart surgery and it took almost a year to recover. Need I say any more? I was hooked up to a pump that ran my blood through a machine, cooled my body down almost to freezing, cracked open my breastbone so a team of doctors could move my lungs around and cut open my heart and … okay, I’ll stop. But for a month after, I was so weak it was all I could do to lift a fork to feed myself, which mostly I wasn’t interested in doing because the meds I needed made me so nauseous, I had no appetite. But a year later, I came back from the brink and was more or less feeling like myself again.
3. I’ve had two marriages end in divorce. Need I go into the heartbreak and disappointment for months and months and months?
4. I’ve given birth. Full stop.
5. I’ve gone on diets for months at a time and lost up to 25 pounds. More than once.
6. I’ve written over 30 books and have 55 titles including paperbacks on Amazon, all written after my open-heart surgery at age 72.
7. I had a crappy childhood, just like many of you.

As it happens, I’ve already voted and dropped off my ballot at a polling place, and been notified it’s been received and will be counted. So I don’t have to wait all day on a line in bad weather to vote.

But if I did? It would be a piece of cake compared to some of the things I’ve been through. And I haven’t been through really awful things, like cancer. I haven’t lived in a war-torn country. I haven’t lost a child. I haven’t been in a terrible auto-accident and been maimed for life. I haven’t lost all my possessions in a fire. I didn’t endure the Great Depression.

Nor did I fight in the Revolutionary War that turned the 13 colonies into the United States of America. I didn’t fight in the Civil War or either of the two World Wars. But I think of the men and women who did fight in those wars when I go to vote because they put their lives on the line, and often died in those battles to give me the right to vote.

So, if there’s a heaven, and I get to meet those heroes, those hundreds of thousands of warriors, how would I explain that I wimped out? How could I show up whining it was too hard to stand in line for a few hours out of just one day to vote?

I can just imagine them shaking their wings and halos at me and saying, “Say what?”

“Hey, St. Peter?” they’d call to the big guy at the desk keeping tabs on who gets into heaven. “What about this chick? You think she gets a pass to slip past the Pearly Gates? She didn’t even have the stuff to stand on line for a few hours to save her democracy. She had the best experiment in government in her hands, and she said, Boo Hoo. Poor me. It was raining. You didn’t expect me to get my hair wet just to vote, did you?”

You know what St. Peter would say? “Sorry, ma’am, we only have room for people with a backbone.”

So, if you’re thinking of sitting out the election, do this little exercise. Make a list of the hardest things you’ve ever done. Then imagine your ability to live your life the way you choose snatched away from you because there weren’t enough votes to save it. You have to spend the rest of your life knowing it was your fault. You’re doomed to look in the mirror and instead of seeing a face that needs a shave or some foundation and mascara, you see all the people suffering because they don’t live in a democracy anymore. So you look at your reflection and say to yourself, day after day, year after year, “I could have stood on line for a few hours. What was I thinking?”

Don’t be that person. The one with the Day After Regrets. We can all do more than we think we can. We always do.

Pack a go bag, make a party out of it with your music, your fave treats, a camp chair, an umbrella. Make a few friends while you’re waiting for your turn to make your voice heard. And relish knowing you can feel good about yourself when you look in the mirror––for the rest of your life.

I’m an editor and writer on Medium with Top Writer status. I’m also an editor for the publication, Rogues Gallery. I’ve published 55 titles on Amazon and edit for private clients. If you’d like to hire me as your editor for fiction, non-fiction, or business writing, please contact me here. If you’d like to read more of my work on Medium, click here to sign up for my newsletter. Thank you for reading and stay safe.