Old person a few Saturdays ago.

Earlier that day I had been doing get-out-the-vote work with a local progressive political campaign, and one of the people on the phonebank was this 73-year old (African-American) woman with a walker who introduced herself as “Mrs. [LAST NAME]” to me and was called that by everyone.

At one point, she put her hand over the receiver and called out to the candidate, who was standing across the room, “[CANDIDATE’S FIRST NAME], when is the election again?”, and the candidate called back and told her.

Later, I told both of them that that cracked me the shit up, because you could tell we were running a grassroots campaign.

“[CANDIDATE’S FIRST NAME], when is the election again?”, I said, repeating the words and mimicking covering the phone mouthpiece, and both of them really laughed at that.

It turns out that the 73-year old (African-American) woman with the walker had also just been arrested for the first time in her life the previous week, as part of an action against closure of recent community resources.

“Mrs. [HER OWN LAST NAME],” she told me, telling me what the cops told her, “It’s two-thirty in the morning and you have a walker, we’ll let you go.”

Then, she continued, “But I told them, ‘I came here as part of a group, and I’m not leaving until everyone else is!’”.

I then asked her if she stayed long enough in jail to try out the food.

She said no, but someone brought her a sub.