Exciting Times...

Exciting Times…

The Municipal Elections are just days away.  Important decisions must be made.  What to do?  Research?  Yes.  Talk with candidates?  Yes.  Study political platforms?  Yes.  Then decide who will do the best job as  mayor,  councillors-at-large and ward councillor.  Serious stuff.  I want my vote to count, to make a difference, to support changes in local government.

I’ve met the candidates.  Most have been to my door; each with a face stretched into smiles, dripping with sincerity and enthusiasm like a puppy humping my leg.  Each shared promises of everything I’ve ever wanted for my neighbourhood…sort of…like a political genie offering to grant three wishes.  Let’s see.   I wish for world peace and for an end to poverty and for a municipal government that pays attention to the constituents.   Possible?  I’m not sure, not sure at all.

Some things are bothering me.  I live in a bungalow with a front door at the front and…you guessed it…a back door at the back.  Simple.  Straightforward.   Yes?   But the correct answer is NO. 

A dozen times or so, candidates or their representatives have knocked at the back door and we’ve talked.  Later, but not much, this same person returns to the same back door with the same pamphlet and speech they shared with me earlier.  When I point out that they’ve already chatted with me, they shake their heads and thank me, then scurry away.   Does my house look different at different hours of the day?  I wonder about their lack of focus.  How will elected officials focus on the voices of the people they represent?  How will our local government know where it’s going if it can’t remember where it’s been…even earlier the same day?

Wait, there’s more.  Political hopefuls or their reps come to the back door with their flurry of enthusiasm and rhetoric and fifteen minutes later, there they are again…but now, ringing the bell at the front door.  When I answer the front door, they pull their strings and like a child’s doll…there it is, the same word spew.   I am concerned that these people have no short term memory, nor any sense of direction.  Perhaps, my home is odd with its two doors…a front and a back…unusual and therefore, confusing.

But here’s what really bugs me.  Shouldn’t our candidates and soon-to-be elected officials, shouldn’t they know which end is which?... and one end from the other?

Oh...my house, my house…yes, of course, I’m talking about my house.  I hope other houses are different.