For most of us, the choice of which presidential candidate to vote for was disturbing, to say the least. I held my nose and voted, as did Baby and Papa Elf. (Papa and I voted by mail, as we always do, ever since California eliminated the old You-Can't-Vote-by-Mail-Without-a-Good-Reason law.) Baby and I had spent a good portion of the morning hassling with the Pooh-Bahs at the supermarket we've been patronizing for about 40 years. We read the sign (as usual): No credit. We accept Debit cards. Checks require I.D.: Driver's License, Government ID, or Passport. We tried my debit card 40 years ago: first pass, not valid; second pass, not valid; third pass, accepted. The manager apologized for the false starts, and we went home. At the end of the month, we got our bank statement. You guessed it, three identical charges for 100-some-odd dollars at that supermarket. We immediately went back to the market and showed the manager the statement. He apologized profusely, and we decided never again to use a debit card for anything. My driver's license came due last spring, when I was in the hospital. I decided that it was better that I give up driving--Papa and Baby agreed. So I've been using my passport for I.D. But that wasn't good enough--it didn't have my address printed in it. (U.S. passports leave addresses blank, since we Yanks move around a lot.) Another sub-manager came up, and recognized me as a regular customer. But that was then and this is now. No check accepted. Fortunately, Baby Elf had the cash to bail me out. She was astounded later when she voted, that she didn't have to show any I.D. to vote (since she had a valid ballot that had been mailed to her. In Louisiana she had had to show a valid I.D. at the polls.)I have enough faith in our government to believe that neither candidate can possibly "turn this into a fascist/communist state" in a mere four years.
