Now I suppose pretty much everyone is sick and tired of hearing about the civic elections (except those who were actually elected). Yes, this week featured a “riveting” night of interestingly epic, and some not-so-epic, election battles and I heartily congratulate all those who ran, win or lose.
But there was one thing sorely missing. This time we had no full-time local television to keep the breathless, suspenseful drama churning out for hours of “riveting” live coverage to keep those political junkies glued to their TV sets. While the other 92 per cent of the population who didn’t vote were busy clicking their remotes to find Dancing with the Stars Who aren’t Really Stars.
At least Shaw Cable covered the election on TV for a short time. Their snippets were well done and much appreciated, as far a snippets go.
A different lifetime ago, I once was a TV videographer/reporter and I covered several excruciatingly “exciting” elections. This was long before electronic ballot counting, where the computers always crashed and the so-called “instant results” were never “instant” by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, election night coverage consisted mostly of all the local jaded journalists gathered at City Hall hanging around the snack table, relentlessly munching away while trying to look interested as the ballots were busy crashing computers.
The final tally usually took several dozen hours longer than it took to build the entire City Hall in the first place.
My most personal memorable memory of an election night harkens back many moons ago when the popular Mayor Bob McGhee was running for his third or possibly 10th re-election and, as usual, I was slated to cover the evening’s riveting ballot-reveal and ensuing celebration at City Hall.
As fate would have it, my Better Half and I had just given birth to our daughter (well she did the actual giving birth and I did the really hard work by holding her hand and not fainting), and I had, the day of the election, in an unrelated coincidental incident, tried to lift our rickety old tent trailer off the trailer hitch by hand.
My BH found me quite a while later stuck out in the back yard, holding onto a fence for dear life with a scientific condition that expert medical professionals term “putting your back out.”
So as if she didn’t have anything better to do with a three-week-old baby and a two-year-old son on her hands, she managed to load all of us into our miniature Nissan hatchback, myself being the biggest baby of all, half laying in the passenger seat with back pain that would make a swift kick in the groin seem positively pleasant.
Somehow she got us to the Emergency Room where the nurses nursed me into a wheelchair and into a room with many curtains where I lay painfully motionless while my children grew into teenagers.
Just kidding about that last part, but when I finally saw a doctor and explained that I had to work the election in a few short hours, he laughed so hard it made my back go into severe spasms again. Then he gave me several shots that made the entire world a much happier place all of a sudden, in fact I didn’t even mind when he presented me with what only can be described as a “girdle.”
“You’ll need to wear this if you plan to work tonight,” he said. “It will stabilize your back and minimize your spasms.”
The corset-like device wasn’t quite exactly like those 19th century antique garments you see in old photographs where several assistants are cinching and pulling with all their might with ropes and pulleys, etc., to tighten a girdle thingy on the ample midsection of ladies, but it was close. This modern version was all Velcro and elastic, but it was still definitely a girdle.
So a couple of hours later, here I come, stumping into City Hall election night mayhem oddly debilitated by the combination of extremely powerful medicine, stabbing back spasms and a girdle that was four sizes too tight, reeling into the fray limping and tilting like a drunken sailor in rough seas.
Headlong into a bustling, crowded room of non-girdled people (at least most of them), me weaving stiffly along, unable to bend at the waist and on top of it all, slightly light-headed due to the fact that I couldn’t exactly get a full breath with my girdle squishing my midsection like a boa constrictor.
And to make matters worse, the painkillers that made my world Disneyland-happy for a couple of hours were cruelly wearing off, and I had to carry a 10-kg television camera on one shoulder. Which always put me a bit off-kilter, even on a good day.
I remember clearly stumbling and wincing my way through the throngs to get to Mayor Bob for an interview, and when I stiffly tottered up to him with a look on my face somewhere between a silly grin and a crooked grimace, he greeted me with a hearty handshake, as he was wont to do. In a classic response to his typical gregariousness my back went out, my knees buckled and I very nearly dropped my $50,000 Betacam TV camera on his shoes.
“Gak argggg yeowwwwwlflll,” I blurted through clenched teeth by way of congratulations on his impending inevitable victory.
He didn’t seem to notice — I’m sure nothing the media did surprised him anymore.
“You’re looking trim for a change,” he says, being sort of polite.
“It … it’s the girdle …” I managed to mumble, but Bob just laughed, thinking I was attempting a clever retort as usual and turned to do an interview with another cameraman who was reasonably upright and apparently girdle-less.
I don’t remember much else about that election night, as the meds wore off and the girdle wore tighter. I filed my stories and finally made it home in a cold sweat, and literally crawled into bed.
The back spasms got better after a week or two with the right treatment.
But I kept that girdle thingy. Oh, not because I’m afraid my back will go out again, but because there are times when I have to go somewhere where people might notice how “trim” I’m getting. And that’s gotta be worth a couple of hours of walking funny and not being able to breathe.
As long it isn’t election night — I can’t take that much excitement, especially wearing a girdle.
Harley Hay is a local freelance writer, author, filmmaker and musician. His column appears on Saturdays in the Advocate.