You Don't Know Me

It was an interesting challenge - canvassing during an election always is. The husband and wife called down the street, asking me to return. They had been in the back yard and hadn't heard me knocking on their door."Let me be honest and just say that I don't like your leader," the woman offered, forceful and apologetic at the same time."Okay ... why?" I asked."He's never lived in Canada. He's just in it for himself  and he wants to raise income taxes on the middle-class. That's not right." Well, that's a lot for two short sentences. I asked her where she got that information, expecting it was from the negative ads that have been playing for a couple of years. She denied that, claiming that had just received a phone call the previous evening from my Conservative opponent's campaign and that these were the things they listed. "I asked where they were calling from because they didn't know anything about London. They said Toronto.""We think they're calling from some hired firm," the husband chimed in.Then it was down to explaining why they were wrong. At one point I asked her if she ever met Mr. Ignatieff or spoken to him. She demurred, saying she didn't often get involved in politics much. "What do you do ... for work, I mean?" I asked."I'm a public school teacher," she responded. "Ah," I said, "now I understand." It was a gambit I was taking, to be sure."What does that mean?" she blurted out."Well, you folks have it pretty good ... right? You get weekends and summers off. And that's not counting Easter and Christmas. You can leave your work at the school and just enjoy your time home. You get paid well and you've got a pretty good union."She almost exploded, causing her husband to look at me in concerned fashion. "It feels like we never stop working," she began. "Nobody understands that we have to take our work home every night. My husband and I like the Discovery Channel, but I rarely get the chance to watch it with him anymore. Two weeks of my summer are taken up with finishing up all the jobs from the last session, and another two weeks are spent getting ready for the next. But you wouldn't know that, would you?"It was then she noticed the little smile on my face. "Oh ... I see," she offered quietly. I then told her how my daughter was a teacher and that on Saturday mornings I meet at a coffee shop with an old teacher friend who fills me in on the challenges now facing the teaching profession. "You were right to say I was misjudging you, because I've never walked in your shoes," I remarked."No, no, I see now what you were doing. And you were right. Teachers often get blamed for a lot of things they didn't even do and I guess I've just done the same thing to your boss." Unsurprisingly, because she is a fine example of her profession, she shook my hand, asking if I'd like some coffee. As I left she remarked, "Why does politics do that do us?" To which I replied that I've been trying to figure that out for over four years. That night they phoned back, asking for a lawn sign and promising to vote. It was one of those encounters I'll likely remember for some time.This is what modern politics has become. It seeks to suppress your vote and bring out your negative side. Don't let it happen. Don't let your opinion of another be determined by a forceful and willing attempt to mislead you about another person's character. Try to confirm that good people are attempting to run for politics and that you can only really make up your mind through attempting to understand them through clear glasses. And let your conscience be your guide, not some hired guns from another city.