Carrying America’s Dirty Laundry, Vote Nov. 6, 2018

Cleaning up and getting to work.

Baby Boomers and Millennials get accused of so many things.

Lazy parents produced entitled kids? You’ve heard that one?

Millennials are too self absorbed to vote on Nov. 6, 2018? That’s been going around, too.

The good news is not all Boomers are lousy parents and not all Millennials are spoiled little shits.

The bad news is not many hear the good new, but don’t let that hinder the voting effort.

The two grinders in the top image are currently thirty one and twenty eight years old. One’s birthday is today.

Last night we all rounded up the time and ink to vote in Oregon. That’s right, we sat down at the kitchen table, read the Voter’s Pamphlet, and marked up our mail-in ballots with blue and black ink.

Not everyone agreed with every decision, but we powered through.

Today I drop the ballots off, but not in the mail. I’ll take them to the voter box by the police station. No way that’s getting tampered with, right?

The two boys up top will be my age in thirty years and tomorrow they’ll see what that world will look like.

I’m not the dad who sugar coats things to make kids feel better. If they needed sweet talk I’d do it, but not for long. Instead we talk the talk you get with an intact family of mummy, daddy, and the wee little children.

Sounds nice, like a life goal. But it’s not easy. I’ve had to fight both boys at different time, but it was a bonding sort of fight.

Big boy and I faced off in the front room when he was seventeen in hard core wrestling where he body locked me and I went up in the air belly to belly into a wall and popped up for more after crushing a television table and tipping the TV over.

The ref, also known as wife and Ma, called the match before any more damage. It took a little time to convince the kid I was proud of him for not backing down.

Little boy and I put on the sixteen ounce boxing gloves when he was sixteen and sparred in the front room. He circled toward the stairs before giving me a wallop in the head and racing up and locking himself in the bathroom.

It took a few minutes to convince him I wasn’t angry at his cheap shot. His tactics were sound with his old man.

While we worked our ballots I thought of our moments, our memories, and how we used them to pull together.

That’s what voting does, it pulls people together. Make a memory with your kids and friends and vote together.