New Friends

TigerBlog would like to tell you about his six new friends.

You're going to love this story.

Their names are Christa and her husband Tom, Linda and her husband Bill, Heidi and Lynda. TigerBlog had never met any of them before yesterday.

They were random strangers, thrown together in the name of democracy. How's that? 

TB lives in Pennsylvania, where yesterday was the last day for early voting. He could have gone at any point the last few weeks, and of course, he decided to go yesterday.

To vote early, he had to go to the courthouse in Doylestown. He figured he'd drive past in the early afternoon, see what the line looked like and then wait it out.

Why not just vote on Election Day? That was an option too, though he remembered back to the last Presidential election, when he waited in line for two hours or so.

How long would this take? Even it took that long, it was such a nice day that standing outside didn't seem to be so big a deal.

So, TB parked his car, walked over and got on the end of the line. The first person he met was Heidi, the youngest of the new friends. She was also the one who seemed to be the most dialed in on the process, which turned out to be simple — take a form, fill it out ... and wait. 

And wait and wait and wait. In the end, it would be three full hours between getting on the line and casting his ballot. And you want to know what? 

To quote Crista — "could it be that our little group almost made waiting in line for three hours fun?"

Yes. It was fun. Seriously. It turned out to be fun.

It started out like any long line with total strangers. A nod here, a "hello" there. Everyone had the same question: "How long do you think this will take?" Heidi gave instructions to the newcomers. And then the wait began.

By the way, it's human nature, TB supposes, to look behind when you're in a long line and be a little annoyed that there aren't more people who have to wait as long as you were. 

Lynda, for her part, was the most prepared, as she had brought along a book to read. It started to look like 1) the group would be in the line for a long time and 2) that she would finish her book long before she voted. 

If you're going to wait for that long, you might as well make the most of it. By the time it reached the front, the group of seven people knew what each other's favorite movies were, the best place they'd ever traveled to, that it was Bill and Linda's second marriage and that Christa and Tom had been married for more than 30 years. Lynda was an artist. Heidi was a caregiver. 

Bill had been a teacher and administrator in the Central Bucks School District. Linda was the bookkeeper at a local church. Christa and Tom were also retired; she had been a librarian, and he had  been a high school art teacher. 

It took about 30 minutes to find out that Lynda grew up close to where Bill did in New Jersey, and they both loved the Sloppy Joe sandwich at the Millburn Deli. And that's not Sloppy Joe as in ground beef. If you're from that area, you know the difference.

And, of course, it came out that TB was a writer. And that he'd be chronicling all of this.

The natural follow up question was what kind of writer? When TB mentioned Princeton Athletics, Bill said something about how his sister had been an athlete at Princeton.

When Bill said his last name was "Meier," TB immediately said: "You're Maggie Meier's brother?"

And he was. 

Maggie Meier's brother? TB was in line with Maggie Meier's brother this entire time? At one point about an hour earlier, TB had said that the group was closing in on the moment when "somebody knew somebody's sister." 

As it turned out, TB was right. 

Maggie Meier? How about that? 

TigerBlog wrote a long story about Meier just last year, when Ellie Mitchell was closing in on her longtime record for career rebounds at Princeton. You can read it HERE if you like.

Bill and Linda were amazed that TB was the one who'd written the story. They said it was a big deal in their family, and TB appreciate that. 

Maggie Meier graduated from Princeton in 1978, winning the von Kienbusch Award her senior year as Princeton's top female athlete. No player, male or female, ever had more than her 1,099 career rebounds, and that record stood until this past February, when Mitchell finally broke it.

TB and Bill posed for a photo together, which Linda sent off to Maggie. TB said to say hello. 

The line wrapped around the courthouse. When you eventually got to the front steps, you had to wait until you were allowed inside in groups of 10. Were you there already? Nope. There was still another line to wait on before you were issued your ballot. 

It was great to meet them all. They made the three hours seem more like 30 minutes or so. There were way more laughs and smiles than complaints.

And another great part of their time together? The subject of who was going to vote for whom never came up.

Hey, maybe there's hope after all.