My Dirty Secret

I have a dirty secret. So dirty and so secret, I don't think I've told anyone, except maybe my friend Banana because I've been so ashamed. But now I'm gonna broadcast it all over the Internet -- yes, I'm perverse. I have successfully repressed this secret for the last few years but this weekend signs have been popping up in my neighbourhood that force me to remember my shameful secret. I will tell you more about this sign later; but first, my secret:

I didn't vote in the last municipal election.

(There, I've even indented it and put it on its own line.) I hate it when people don't vote, especially when they do it because they don't like any of the candidates as a way to voice their protest. They can't hear you if you don't vote! But that's not why I didn't vote. I have a much more retarded excuse. It's not even an excuse. But election night was a dark, cold and wet night and we just didn't feel like venturing out in time to get to the polls; I think we also didn't know exactly where our poll was or who the candidates were in our ward. (I told you it was retarded.) Funnily enough (in a totally un-ha ha way), my mother-in-law was running for city councillor in a different ward so we did make it out to the place where candidates waited for results to support her (she didn't win). And everyone kept asking us which ward we voted in and we didn't know and had to stammer out awkward responses without letting out our horrible dirty secret.

But here comes the even more horrible part. The mayor, Karen Farbridge, who we were planning to vote for and who we thought was a shoe-in, didn't get re-elected. Instead we got an awful conservative woman who let Walmart in after a really long fight under the former mayor. Now I don't mean to sound like I'm the least bit knowledgeable about municipal politics or activities. But I know I liked Karen Farbridge and don't like what I've seen happen since Kate Quarrie got in. And I know I felt horribly guilty when she showed up at my belly dance class shortly after the election. Apparently she had some time on her hands. And I felt horribly guilty when a friend of mine lamented her loss.

So, the signs that brought my dark secret back to the front of my mind are campaign signs for Karen Farbridge. Apparently another municipal election is coming up in Guelph on November 13, 2006, and I'm happy to see she's running again. And now is my chance for redemption, or some kind of redress or something. For one, I think we will put her sign in our front yard. And I was just checking out her website for other ways I could volunteer and one way is to drive people to the polls. I think that would be a fitting service for us to contribute to right our wrongs of the last election.