Anyway, it's all so disgusting to me that I got my sleepy ass in gear earlier this year and have been doing some volunteer work related to getting our 43rd President out of office: voter-registration drives, door-to-door polling, and so on. And I admit to being pretty proud of myself at first simply for hauling myself off the sofa on some weekends to do this, a few hours here and there on various Saturdays and Sundays in the Philadelphia area (considered crucial in the election, especially the suburbs). But here comes the humbling part: every time I participate in these activities, I meet people (many college-age, but not nearly all) who've traveled so far to volunteer in the SE Pennsylvania area, some from way out of state, youngsters temporarily putting aside education and job opportunities to give all their time to this effort, oldsters who are certainly entitled to spend a sunny weekend afternoon doing something else besides walking around the non-pedestrian-friendly suburbs to knock on doors and ask questions of strangers.

Just yesterday, I did some polling with a fellow (mid-20s) wearing a "Republicans for Kerry" t-shirt (which message he assured me described himself with 100% accuracy), who, when we were done for the afternoon and had returned to central Philadelphia, got in his car for the two-hour drive back to Maryland, where he lives with his new wife, and told me "See you again next weekend." I repeat: Yesterday I met a young, recently married registered-Republican man who's spending his Indian-summer Sundays driving two hours each way between Maryland and Pennsylvania in order to spend more hours canvassing voters in the Philadelphia suburbs in the hope of getting Sen. John Kerry elected President. Meanwhile, after waving him goodbye, a 30-minute stroll and I'm home again on my sofa. This is when I'm proud to call myself a (properly humbled) American.