November 911

“Just the thought of Dubya giving a concession speech on Nov. 2nd excites the hell out of me,” said one of my 60 year old volunteers, “In fact, just thinking about it is giving me an erection!”
I laughed and then calmy replied, “Well sir, let’s just hope we don’t have any problems again with electile dysfunction”.


Actually, I thought of my golden reply about 10 seconds after I hung up the phone with him. Oh well.
It was a very interesting day on the phones to say the least.
I spend about 6 hours on the phone a day, coordinating logistics with volunteers in their precincts and recruiting new members for the grassroots network. During these marathon sessions on the telephone, I inevitably get bored.
I often wonder about the identity of the previous owner of my phone, which I bought at a thrift store for $2.00 during my first day of work when we were trying to set up our office with a small amount of cash. I sometimes feel the urge to press the speed-dial buttons on the phone and ask the people on the other end of the line 20 questions to discover the great mystery.
I never follow through though. There’s work to do.
Today, I had to call back a volunteer I had just hung up with so I pressed what I thought was the redial button. Nothing happened, so I hung up and dialed the number the long way- the way of the Luddites. After I hung up the phone with the volunteer, my phone began ringing instantly.
“Hello”
“Sir, stay on the line! What’s your name?”
“Ummm… Mark.”
“Is everything ok?”
“I’m doing alright. How are you today? Are you calling to find out how you can volunteer and help defeat Bush?”
“Sir, you called me. This is 911.”
“Ooops… My bad…”
I thought we cleared everything up, but to my co-workers surprise, an officer showed up at our desks a few minutes later to make sure everything was really okay. I convinced both my co-worker and the officer that everything was under control and got back to work.