a confession.

We had such good intentions.

I mailed in our absentee ballot requests months ago, we faxed them just to be sure. We received the ballots in the mail and put them aside to faithfully do our research and make decisions.

Life happened in there somewhere, including my parents coming and leaving, three trips to Chiang Mai in a month, and many other messy things.

I looked at the dates: we had time, it could be postmarked even ten days after the election. I put it in my notebook and wrote reminders everywhere.

Earlier this week, we sat down to do our research. We filled out the ballots. We put them in envelopes.

I reread the instructions and the dates, now seeing that the ballots instead had to arrive within ten days of the election. They must be postmarked the day of, in the American time zone. And we’d missed it.

I had read it wrong the first time, thus making all following notes to myself wrong.

Epic fail.

I teach a course on democracy, the importance of voting, the value of individual participation. The incredible blessing that our government is has never been so apparent to me as it has been in the past year.

And yet I didn’t vote, because I was unorganized. I feel like it deserves a confession.

I feel like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail as she flightily recalls, “I have something to tell you, Frank. I didn’t vote. In the last mayoral election, when Rudy Giuliani was running against Ruth Messenger, I went to get a manicure and forgot to vote.”

So there you have it: this is my confession. I have been preaching the value of voting to a number of students, and I myself forgot to vote. Worse, I led my husband astray and assured him I was watching the dates.

And on that note, I begin another course this week as a very unbecoming teacher.