There are few things worse than spending 12 hours each day walking around bad neighborhoods in 95-degree heat, trying to convince poor people to vote in a primary election.
Who the hell votes in the primaries? Only elderly people who have no other excuse to leave the house vote in qualifying elections. That or people with grotesque disabilities who enjoy disturbing others with their stumps and mutated faces.
The work was $100 per day, though, and I love politics, so why not? A coordinator for a low-level California Democrat found my resume on Craigslist, a classifieds website mostly used by lonely men to post fake actress jobs in order to receive bikini photos. The coordinator said I'd spend four days calling the candidate's supporters on the phone and reminding them to vote. It seemed easy.
When I arrived at one of the campaign offices, I realized I'd been tricked. I wouldn't be calling people, I'd be walking door-to-door in East L.A. convincing registered Democrats to vote for our candidate over the others. Here's a fun fact: Latinos in East L.A. don't really like it when white kids ring their doorbell and lecture them on the importance of voting.
Here's another fun fact: Everyone in East L.A. owns a large dangerous dog. Dobermans. Pitbulls. Rottweilers. These dogs are extremely popular both for protection and scaring away graffiti taggers. A dangerous dog is fine if the person's yard has a fence, but some people who have no fence at all allow their dogs to sit on their porch without a leash.
I was chased down the block by a Rottweiler for walking on the sidewalk past its house. If the dog had been interested in tearing my face off instead of just scaring me away, it would have had no problem doing so. At another house, I walked up to the door and heard growling above me. It was an oversized pitbull standing on the flat front section of the roof. I backed away slowly, thereby saving my testicles from becoming a chew toy.
For those of you who don't know, I'm not talking about a cute little pitbull like this one. I'm talking about a big, mean sonofabitch like this one.
Luckily, the campaign office paired me with a Latino girl who spoke Spanish, so if the dog had jumped off the roof, I could've tripped the girl and saved my own life. In four hours, the two of us only talked to a dozen people or so because of the dog problem. Every person we spoke to eyed me suspiciously, obviously not thrilled to see a white kid with hippie hair walking around with a young Latino girl.
At the end of the day, the coordinator was nice enough to transfer me to the Hollywood office for my final three days of work. This was a much safer and more comfortable area for me. It's easier for me to gain the trust of Hollywood's hipsters, druggies, and gay people. The hipsters and druggies see my shaggy hair and think I'm one of them, and apparently all gay men are attracted to blue-eyed, light-haired guys who look like they're 12 years old.
Ha! Take that, harmless and passive gay community! Score one for the straight team!
There's plenty of other funny stories involving my four days at the political campaign, but I don't have time to tell them here. To give closure, our candidate won the primary, and he's a fantastic politician who will serve my state well. The whole experience was both interesting and satisfying, and I stole eight Mountain Dew Code Reds, three microwaveable burritos, and two bananas from the campaign office on the last day.
