REMARKS: OF BIFOCALS, DIMPLED CHADS AND FAST FOOD VOTING

When my last birthday came around in October, I was conning myself into believing it wasn't really so bad. "Just picture yourself in your mid-50s," I told myself. You'll think back and say "Gee, I'd give anything to be 35+ again!" (Like Zsa Zsa Gabor, I'm no longer giving my actual age unless threatened with contempt of court!) I'll look back and see this age as being YOUNG.

That approach seemed to be working -- UNTIL I visited an optometrist to get my prescription updated and a pair of glasses that didn't look like they were cleaned daily with sandpaper. To my shock, the doc said "Well, SOME people get bifocals late in life and some get them earlier."

Gee, thanks. Now, instead of looking back at this age as part of my youth, I'll remember it as the year I topped the hill and began the bungee fall. What's next? Denture grip? I'll never forget last spring when I began work on my master's degree at Southeast. One of the traditional-age students referred to me and another 30+ grad student as "young middle age." Sheesh!

I guess I should take some comfort that I apparently voted for the candidates I intended to vote for in November. At least I GUESS I did. Actually I've never understood how the Florida voters could vote wrongly and know they had done so before leaving the polls. (I've also never understood why they simply hadn't requested new ballots.)

Oh well, World War II added "flak" and other terms to our vocabulary. Now we're adding "chad" in all his varieties -- dimpled, hanging, swinging, pregnant and Cruella. No, wait! It's Katherine Harris who is called Cruella DeVil, not one of the chads! I suspect, though, that she must be employing Horace and Jasper CHADdun down there in the sunshine state. Poor Pongo and Tipper ... er.... Perdita!

The thought hits me that if Truman and Dewey and their followers had maintained the same stubborn reserve to claim a victory that this year's participants have shown, we might STILL be awaiting the outcome of the 1948 election. The chad stops here!

I have a solution for the problem -- a "modest proposal," if Jonathan Swift will pardon the copyright infringement. With all the telemarketers at work (and that HAS to be the reason our unemployment figures are at an all-time low!), why don't we just make use of these annoying callers? On election day they could double their staff and call each home, going down the ballot and recording each citizen's vote -- in between pitches for long distance service, aluminum siding and donations to obscure veterans' causes.

Heck, if someone can actually go back and correctly REPEAT who he/she voted for at the end of the conversation, they can receive a FREE 30-day trial subscription to "Dimpled Chad" magazine! Of course the caller's supervisor would have to listen in and confirm that the other party did indeed vote for the candidates he/she intended to vote for and to remind the individual that multiple voting is technically illegal.

For those who don't feel comfortable voting by phone, we could always adopt the same system for the local drive through. "Would you like to vote for Al Gore with that Happy Meal, ma'am?" Of course if Pat Buchanan gets too many Big Mac votes, all heck will break loose again!

The humor dredged out of the situation (thanks in part to Ms. Harris, the "Grumpy Old Men" [aka James Baker and Warren Christopher], and others) has helped keep it from being totally unbearable. Still, I believe one caller to a spin room a week or two ago had the right thought in mind. "If this were almost any other country in the world," he said, "by this time there would be tanks in the streets."

He was right. Hopefully we can keep our senses of humor through this long ordeal. Let us not forget, though, that the system seems to be surviving -- and it is clearly still the best system around.