…to make topical conversation at the post office.

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Back in October of 2008, the country was in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election.  I needed to sign for some letters being held at the post office during that October, so I headed there on my lunch break.  On my way into the Post Office, I held the door for a middle-aged woman who smiled at me and offered her thanks.

“Thank you so much,” she said with a big smile, as though surprised to see such manners in this day and age.

She and I had to stand next to each other at the counter for while I had to sign various receipts before getting my mail, she had to wait to tell the postal employee what mail she’d come to get.  ”I’m here to pick up the mail for the Ohio Republican Party,” she said to the postal employee.

“Uh oh.  You’re not going to try to influence my vote, are you?” the postal employee responded with a smile.  The woman in her late thirties then laughed with the woman from the Republican party.  ”I’m still undecided.”

I looked up and over at the two in slight confusion, thinking that the two women were joking around and deciding to play along.  Done with my letter signing, I picked up my letters and turned my body to face them.  ”What’s to decide?” I said and smiled as I held up my right hand as though weighing an option.  ”Pure evil?” I said and raised my left hand much higher as if to weigh another option.  ”Barack Obama.”

The woman from the republican party looked shocked as she took her bin of mail off of the counter.  Her mouth remained open in disbelief as she walked past me to exit the post office.

“I think you freaked her out,” the postal employee said to me.

“She had to know that I was kidding,” I said, perplexed.  ”Besides, it was hardly the most incendiary rhetoric.”

As I exited the post office to go to the parking lot, the woman from the Republican party saw me from her car.  She continued to look at me in open mouthed disbelief as she departed.

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