3 Days Without a President

I might be the last American to find out who our President-elect is. Probably not. But close?

I'm three days into my social experiment to see if I can go 1 week without finding out who won the 2016 Presidential Election. I'd try to go longer, but I'm too curious and it's starting to get lonely.

The Method: 

• Avoid social media, radio, and any other news source
• Have Husband check suspicious emails, texts, and Whatsapps
• When discussion heads in a political direction, inform person of my (so far successful) experiment

I almost abandoned the experiment Wednesday morning when Husband pointed out that he couldn't read the funny tweets to me - I dearly love to share a laugh with that man. At this point I'm dedicated to the mission. The hardest part is not being able to participate in several Whatsapp groups WHO WON'T STOP TALKING ABOUT IT! You know who you are! MARTYN! (shout out to Husband for warning me and scrolling to safe parts of the conversation...when there are any.)

What I've Learned:

• I don't talk to very many humans over the age of 2
• The ones I do talk to are not so obnoxious as to purposefully spoil the experiment (thanks, guys)
• I don't miss social media that much
• Reading actual books (written before Nov. 8, 2016, of course) and doing crossword puzzles is sufficient to entertain me in the place of scrolling through Facebook and Instagram

The Reason:

• To see how pervasive media is in my life - measured both by how difficult it is to avoid and by how much I depend on it. Surprisingly, less than I thought on both accounts!
• To point out that although this election feels like a huge deal, it's not really. People don't actually talk about it that much or for that long (in my circles) (except for MARTYN!), and life pretty much continues as it did before.
• Because I'll be disappointed with the result no matter who won, so why not just ignore all of it for a while?

I haven't altered our normal routines to remain uninformed. The babes and I took an optional walk around the neighborhood and even stopped in at the coffee shop and stayed for half an hour without overhearing anything. An evening out with small group friends at the planetarium did not produce any political discussion that was within my hearing.

But the weekend is coming and we have a family gathering at Great Grandpa's house. We'll see if I'm able to explain the experiment and if he remembers and adjusts his conversation topics accordingly. I'm expecting to catch wind of something - all it takes is a definitive pronoun, this time around.

Suspicions & Clues: 

• A few months ago I was expecting Trump would win because of the Republican, Democrat, Republican pattern
• More recently, I'd been assuming Hilary would win. Because let's be honest, Trump is a joke. A bad joke.
• I do know that Gary Johnson did not even get 5% of the popular vote which he needed in order to secure funding next time around. Sorry, guy.
• I was told that there is a homemade sign on Siddonsburg Road that I should avoid reading. If it's the same people who had a homemade sign up before the day of the election, I believe they are Trump supporters - but now that I think about it, I'm not sure I ever got a good look at the whole sign. Let's assume that because they live in Dillsburg, they are Trump supporters (sad). I still don't know whether the sign says "Impeach Hilary" or "We won!"
• Apparently my mom stayed up to the bitter end in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. I'm not actually sure who she ended up voting for, but I think I know which way she was leaning. Usually the election is "called" much before 3am, so I'm wondering if she stayed up to pray that somehow the way it was leaning would shift or to make sure that the deal was sealed officially. I don't know how the poles were looking going into the election, so that doesn't help me either.
• A friend said she woke up and checked the results and then was bothered and couldn't go back to sleep and could have used a good chat to remind her that Jesus is our King. But I have no idea which candidate (if either) she supported. I happen to feel that way about both candidates.
• As we were driving by, I happened to see into someone's house and found myself staring right at The Donald on the TV. But I have no idea if that was his acceptance or concession speech.
• The funny tweets mention. I'm sure there would be funny tweets either way. But the funniest tweets I'm imagining are coming from the predicament about what to call a First Lady who used to be a President and is not a lady at all.
• Husband said he didn't watch the concession speeches. If The Donald lost, I kind of want to see how ridiculous that concession speech is - vote rigging accusations, and whatnot. He watched all of the debates so either he lost the stomach for watching The Donald, he was too tired to stay up late enough and couldn't look it up later due to my experiment and omnipresence, or The Donald won.
• The biggest clue I've gotten is the fact that MARTYN won't stop talking about it. It would seem that if the candidate he supported won, there wouldn't be as much to say. But with Martyn, there is always much to say about politics, so... I still don't know.