My Vote Counts… Doesn’t It?

Source of photo: Funny Political Memes Facebook

I remember so clearly the very first time I voted. I was 19 years old and there was a municipal election going on in my home town. I was attending university, in another city. It was the first year that I was eligible to vote and when a person I knew from home approached me to tell me he was taking students’ votes by proxy, I excitedly told him that yes, I would be happy to cast my ballot.

The only problem was, I knew none of the people running and I knew none of their platforms (indeed, I doubt if I knew then, what a platform was). But voting was such an important part of ‘being a grown-up’! I had no idea what to do. As I stood there, studying the list of candidates, I was woefully unprepared to make any kind of rational decision.

Advertisement

A Word or Two About Trust

When I was about five years old, some family friends took me and my three-year-old sister off my parent’s hands for an afternoon of fun, to frolic beside the pool at the hotel where they were staying. I recall that it was a beautiful, perfect, sunny day: the outdoor pool looked enormous to me but I expect that if I could see it today, I would discover it was really quite small. There was a wide set of stairs leading down into the shallow end and I spent long, pleasant minutes tentatively edging my way down to the floor of the pool. There were a number of other families there and, unable to swim myself, I watched the older kids diving off the board and swimming in the deep end with a great deal of longing.

Defining Unconditional Love – Three Little Pigs Style

I was a child in the sixties: a tumultuous time to say the least. My parents were very much a product of the fifties: that June Cleaver, Leave it to Beaver time when Mommies wore pretty dresses and did their hair and make-up every single day and Daddies went to work before the children were up and came back home just in time to kiss their offspring’s fresh, clean little faces before Mommy whisked them off to bed so she could serve Daddy his supper in peace.

Farewell Jacques*, and Thank You…

“Way down the street there’s a light in his place
He opens the door, he’s got that look on his face
And he asks you where you’ve been
You tell him who you’ve seen
And you talk about anything”

Gerry Raferty, Baker Street

Me and Mr. ‘Jones’

I would have been about 12 years old when I met ‘Mr. Jones’. At the time, I was an active and sought-after babysitter.