…when I was 12 years-old. It was 1984, and I was in civics class. Do they even have those kind of classes anymore? Our teacher actually worked part-time as a nighttime deli meat slicer at a local supermarket to make ends meet. He really didn’t do that great a job teaching, since he was kind of lazy and didn’t really care too much. I once got into a fight with another kid in class after the teacher had left early to go to lunch…before the lunch bell even rang.
Anways, our teacher had photocopied the actual general election ballot for our city and handed out a bunch of copies to us all. They had old-time voting machines in my city back then with those levers that you actually had to pull to vote for a candidate. There was one master lever at the top that you could pull to vote a straight party ticket as well.
This one kid across from me (I forget his name but he was some tall, blonde kid whose mom was a Democratic school committee member) just checked off the box to vote a straight Democratic ticket. He was all proud of himself, and he decided to show us all how quick he was done voting. I remember thinking (and maybe even saying to him) that was a strange way to vote. Now, I almost never vote for Republicans, but anyways…
So, we all voted in a mock election, and our teacher totaled the votes. I think Reagan won the class, and he ended up winning almost every state in the country too in the real election that year.
That night, my Mom, Dad, and I went out to Woolworth’s (a small department store chain) to do some shopping. We were having a typical “what did you do at school today?” conversation, and I told them about the mock election that we had. My parents asked me who I had voted for. So I started telling them, “Well, I voted for Reagan and…”
Both my parents wheeled around in the parking lot as we were heading towards the store, “You did what?!?!”
“I voted for Reagan…all the kids did.”, which was true, and, since I didn’t know any better at the time, so did I.
“Get back to the car and stay there!”, my Dad yelled at me. So I had to stay in the car for the entire time that they were in the store that night.
They both couldn’t believe that I had voted for Reagan. They were both big Democrats at the time, and neither could stand Reagan. Now my Dad talks about how great he was, but that’s just cuz he went off the deep end in 1988. My Mom always says, “They fooled me once, but never again.” She voted for Nixon (as I think a lot of young kids did back then cuz he was in favor of having 18-20 year-olds vote I guess), and she always regretted it.
Now, imagine if everyone’s parents had disciplined their kids for voting for Reagan… 🙂
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