Interesting Things That Happened at the 46th District Caucus

1. It got crowded.


The boyfriend took this one from a balcony. Can you see me? Look for the very pale blob near the middle. No, not that bald guy's head. The orange/blue/white blob.

2. Our cat-sitter went nuts.
Actually, she was already nuts. We just didn't quite realize the full extent of the nuttiness.

We've had several cat-sitters, and in my experience, they tend to be a little wacky. Nice people, but REALLY into cats. I mean, I like cats, but wow. These people are INTO them.

Betti, this particular cat-sitter, is definitely ahead of the pack with her fondness for the felines. But she's also just . . . strange.

She is one of those women who is probably only in her 40's, but looks and acts like she is in her 60's at least. She's not particularly overweight, but she has trouble with stairs. She doesn't smile. When she came over for the intitial where's-the-cat-litter visit before we hired her for the first time, she stayed for over an hour, insisted on going over every inch of the house, and had me fill out about fifteen forms.

So anyway, it turned out that Betti was not only in our district, she was also in our precinct (about 80 people showed up for our precinct alone, a huge turnout). This means that unbeknownst to us, she basically lives on our block.

We took the initial vote for candidates, and Obama was way ahead. Then, various members of our precinct stood up and said things like, "It's an embarrassment of riches this year, but I think Obama is far more electable," or "Obama is inspiring, but Hillary has already proved graceful under fire."

Then Betti stood up and hissed,

"FIRST of all, Hillary is out of the question.* She is a CORPORATIST, and anyone else who would vote for her is a CORPORATIST too. Second of all, I DO NOT LIKE ROCK STAR CANDIDATES. All of these Obama supporters are just STUPID FOLLOWERS who are jumping on the bandwagon just because they think he can win. He is an IDIOT and his followers are IDIOTS, too."

And on it went, for like ten minutes. The woman who was running our caucus kept saying, "Speak up, Letty! People can't hear you!" and Betti would flash her a look that clearly said she would like nothing better than to eat that caucus leader's eyeballs.

3. Two of our 6 delegates were only seventeen years old.
Both of them gave speeches for Obama, too. One of them, our alley neighbor Phoebe, came with her mom, who was a pretty impassioned Clinton supporter. Just seeing the kids all excited about the politics made me tear up.

4. I had to open my big mouth.
A lot of my neighbors had made speeches suggesting (or saying flat out) that the kids today may be excited about politics, but they are dumb and lazy and don't know anything about the issues. In the end I made a speech that started, "I'm a Teen Librarian, and as someone who works with young people all the time, I strongly disagree that they don't know what's going on."

The boyfriend** was like, "You never stop advocating for those teens."

I was a little embarrassed, but it's true.

4. Obama won.
Of our district's 6 delegates, 5 went to Obama, and 1 to Clinton.



*Even so, Betti was on Team Hillary in the end. I guess corporatists are still better than rock stars.

**I need a handy nickname for the boyfriend. Suggestions?