I walked up to the tall drop box at the library as an older woman was coming up from the other direction. I got there first, read the instructions plastered on the thing, figured out where/how you open it–and then couldn’t quite tell for sure if my ballot and Richard’s had gone all the way down inside there and out of retrievable reach or not. That thing is designed not to let anything in that shouldn’t be in there but a few years ago I did encounter one so overstuffed (even though it was emptied every hour) that there were edges of a few envelopes poking out.

So I was hunching down to see below its protective overhang while tapping with my fingers in that very tight space to make sure they’d actually fallen. Go on, git!

At that point the other woman arrived. She chuckled as she watched me.

We had ourselves a small celebration as our eyes met that we were there together making our voices heard. It didn’t matter what each other’s ballots said, it was the fact that we got to say it and we got to witness our fellow American speaking up alongside us and the power of that shared humanity and the power of having our say was so joyful.

Smiles, a sentence or two, and then having made instant friends on the spot we nodded a happy good day to each other and headed back out to the rest of our unknowable lives.