Today we have guest blogger AmyJo braving the caucus with her boys. Amy Jo Lennartson is married to Eric and mom to five-year old twin boys, Gus and Luke. Her hobbies include pretending life in an exurb is no different than it was before kids living in Minneapolis, squeezing out every dime of the family budget while creating legitimate reasons to shop at IKEA, and navigating the waters of international adoption.

We attended our caucus Tuesday night, as did everyone else in Minnesota, kids in tow. We went under the impression we could vote and then leave, which was the plan, which of course didn’t work out.

After successfully navigating the parking lot of the high school, which felt like a life-size video game complete with jumping icy curbs, swerving around illegally parked cars and dodging droves of people, we tried to figure out the system. No maps, no signs, no clue. Adding to a chaos of a record turnout, republicans and democrats were caucusing in the same building, causing an immediate stressor upon entering — where are my people??

Not only was I looking for my party; I was looking for Husband and Twin A and Twin B, who I dropped at the door, and then hot-rodded around looking for place to land my big ol’ van, which ended up in a nearby residential neighborhood, blocking someone’s driveway. Cell phone to my ear, I’m one of many people trying to follow vague instructions in a strange place: “do you see the lockers?” Um, it’s a high school. There are only about 1,000 lockers.

After a process so long and so filled with miscommunication, I dismiss my fantasies of us ever winning The Amazing Race, we find each other and our assigned room from the Small Town we live in. With a child under each of our arms, relief obvious and sweat beading from our foreheads, we burst open the door to a Home Economics Room to find about 40 people already there, sitting fairly quietly around sewing machines with everyone staring at us. Turns out they are staring at us, because they hoped we were in charge, which is hilarious. People are tapping their pens, groaning and mumbling, making small talk about how far sewing machines have come and waiting for some type of instruction.

Our kids though, who have all the time in the world, have no fear start telling people who they are voting for. Twin B is voting for “Rubakoclama” and Twin A is voting for “China”. Twin B asked “why are you voting for China?” to which he proudly replied, “because I got a job there!” Either that’s a reference to Uncle’s recent trip to China, or I need to work harder at influencing his choices. I did it with shoes and I’m not above doing it with politics.

When our room finally received an instruction packet a collective sigh of relief could be heard and we all agree to do whatever we can to not only get this party started, but to move it along. Read instructions. Sign in. Find more paper. Refer to instructions. Elect chair. Refer to instructions. Elect co-chairs. The entire time this is going on, we are bribing our kids with ice cream and popsicles as their bedtime snack if they would please just stop playing with pedals to the sewing machines and making “vvrrooooom” noises and screaming they want to go home.

Although it was well spoken for everyone in the room, nobody left. Was it that after securing a parking spot, they were determined? Or was it that these people, after feeling like they’ve not been listened to for so many years, were finally getting a voice? It seemed that now, if all that was standing in their way of being heard were a few “big foot” sewing projects and a list of instructions, they could wait.

Anyone else bring their kids to caucus? What bribes bought you some time?

Here’s a related article on kids and voting on babble.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 7th, 2008 at 9:42 am and is filed under Family Life, Guest Bloggers, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.