Elections in Brooklyn

   Every day, the line stretched for three blocks. Black people of various ages. The devil got into me to work at the elections - nothing but trouble. Of course, they pay for this, but if you calculate it by the hour, it turns out to be mere nonsense. I, indeed, am a retiree and a recent widower, so it turns out to be a kind of paid entertainment.

   The preliminary elections last seven days, and all seven days there's a line from early morning. In the rain, with chairs. Even when we, the simple workers of the polling station, arrive at five in the morning, the line is already there. And everyone looks so law-abiding - it's unclear how just a couple of days ago they were looting stores in Manhattan?

   Or maybe it wasn't them after all?

   Everyone unanimously votes for Biden, as if they had agreed upon it.

   The local precinct boss declared that everyone should be instructed to vote strictly according to the party list. That is, find your party and go straight down the line. Don't get distracted by the sides. I, as a decent person and in some ways even a Republican, warned my colleague that with such an approach he could end up in jail. I warned him gently, to which he replied that he knows what he is doing, that these are the instructions from the leadership, and that he is not at all interested in my opinion.

   I heeded and kept quiet, but to everyone who asked me something, I explained that voting straight down is not necessary and that the main thing is to make one choice per line.

   The crowd is absolutely homogeneous, it's unusually dark to the eyes. Unusual for New York. A lot of people with various kinds of problems. Many overweight people. Not so much overweight as having abnormally large buttocks. Even little girls. I don't think it's just the food, probably, it's the breed.

   The breed probably explains some dullness, though coupled with friendliness.
   By the third day, I stopped hinting at the possibility of not only voting vertically, and by the fifth, I firmly started suggesting this vertical approach. Too many ballots were getting spoiled…

   On the main Election Day, I worked at the precinct near my home. The usual Brooklyn international of all colors of the rainbow, but for some reason without the super buttocks. I even asked one of the young, agile, well-built Black election workers, surely pretty (hard to tell in a mask), why these buttocks are not particularly visible here, to which I got no answer.

   She just smiled (you can guess by the squint) and seemed even a bit embarrassed.

   Surely she thought I was trying to compliment her.