Polling Eccentricities

I guess it's the day for voting and therefore I shall add my two cents ('cause that's pretty much all I have). 1.) Why is the oldest volunteer always the one in charge of finding your name in the big book with pint size print? Now I'm not really an ageist and I feel that people should be allow to do any and all jobs they're capable of, but on Voting day, time is of the essence because if you're a voter you're either sneaking out of work to place your vote or fitting voting inbetween picking up the kids from school and completing that big presentation for your boss. You don't have the time, let alone the patience, to wait in a mile long line that rival's Ross hoping that the lovely grandma with bifocals will flip through the voter registration pages faster than a snail. Your last name starts with a "Y", but she's still searching through the "M" names.

Plus, there are always ten times more volunteers than need be at the polling places for "Grandma" to be the only one allowed to look through the big book. Wouldn't it be easier to have multiple books, and therefore multiple people checking you in so that you could move through the line faster? They could compare the books at the end of the day to see if there were any discrepancies, like double voting, but if the people stationed at the electronic box were actually paying attention to the people submitting their ballots, there shouldn't be a problem. I'm just giving suggestions.

The second thing I wanted to comment on is that while my sister Robby was working the poll's in Santa Barbara, she called to tell me that her day was "made and subsequently ruined by seeing a really cute guy" come to her table and then tell her his name was....wait for it... this is totally true... "Fire Penguin Disco Panda". In all seriousness. He was about 20 and had tattoos of "Happy Feet" and "Saturday Night Fever" all over. At first I thought it was a miracle he'd made it through High School, let alone elementary school, because with a name like that, your head had to have been cleaning some toilets, but yep, he was alive and kicking. Then Robby tells me he named himself, after he turned 18 of course. I'm just wondering that if when he hits 30, is he gonna look in the mirror and ask himself, "What the hell was I thinking?"

As a side note in case Mr. Panda should ever read this blog (which I highly doubt because I have a fanfare of possibly 8 people) you can't really blame me for commenting on your unique preference in name choice as you should best know the consequence of picking such a colorful identifier. More power to you for choosing such an absurd name and not crying when people snicker at you or most likely, behind your back.