A Marshmallow on the Bus

A Hippy on Primary Day

It’s primary day in New York and pretty much every street cornerhas someone out pressing the flesh, as they used to say, handing out fliers, hoping to get your attention just long enough to let you know they back one candidate or another for the political jobs that are up for grabs today. I’m not sure what caught my eye about this one woman this morning, but it was probably the weaving, the crisscrossing- the-sidewalk motion she made, makingsure she spoke to everyone who came by her on their way to the train.

She was working the block where I catch my second bus. She had long, dangling earrings and she was older, older than me certainly, with short, cropped gray hair. Her haircut looked like she’d cut it herself and it badly needed a trim. Her skirt was overlong, striped canvas, hanging almost to her ankles. She wore battered Birkenstocks with the three straps buckled across the top of her bare feet.The lightweight, white, V-necked blousy top had blue wild flowers embroidered on the front and long bell bottom sleeves that were trimmed in the same blue flowers and wider than her wrists at the hem.

She was a hippy; an older version of her long ago self, still handing out political news of some candidate, some issue, something she hoped everyone else would care about as much as she does. She had a TWU plastic shopping bag hanging over her arm, the embodiment of a lifelong choice for activism instead of lethargy, revolution instead of the predictable comfort of the status quo. I’m certain she’s calling her handouts“fliers” now. In the 60s, she probably used to call them “pamphlets” or “leaflets,” words no longer in use.

I wanted to see what was in her leathermessenger bag. Does she keep things in there that no self-respecting hippy would own? Does she have keysto a nice duplex with a river view or an iPhone with Twitter and Facebook or the latest games on it? Or is this someone who still lives in a tiny, cluttered, rent-controlled studio with her cats and books, recycling every bread wrapper, and taking her homemade yogurt with her to marches and sit-ins?

The very idea of keeping up with the politics of every generation for the past 50 years exhausts me, but here she is, handing out fliers. I wonder if she goes downtown to hand out granola bars to the Occupy WallStreet people, but more importantly, I wonder why does that bother me?

I wanted to yell, “Act your age already! The revolution never came because we never really wanted it.” I felt like she needed to understand that the rest of us left school and got jobs and raised families the best way we knew how and left her to hand out the fliers. There is no doubt in my mind that my life was made betterbecauseshe chose to work so hard all these years for social justice and peace.

So why do I begrudge her now the opportunity to keep doing it, to keep hoping that change is always better than what we have, and that tomorrow is only better if we make it so?

She makes me feel guilty.

I feel guilty that she is doing this and I reap the benefits without even taking one of her fliers. I live in another district so I don’t even know what they were running for or why they were so important to her today, but in the end, I hope her people win.

Even if she does go home to that snazzy, expensive duplex with the river views.