Voting mishap is Sherlock’s fault

I really messed up this week.

I knew that Election Day was coming up. I had Tuesday circled on my calendar. I knew it was on Oct. 2 that I needed to get out and vote, toddlers in tow. The individuals standing at the side of the road waving merrily and eagerly brandishing signs were a constant reminder that I needed to get out and vote.

All day Tuesday I knew I needed to go and exercise one of the honored rights we retain as American citizens — my right to vote.

Trouble was, I thought Tuesday was Monday all day long.

I’m well in the middle of directing a play for Valley Performing Arts this season, and we went off script for the first time on Monday evening. For those nonactors amongst you, this means a harsh and demanding director makes every single actor leave their scripts in their seats and they must rehearse on-stage without them for the first time.

Sometimes, nice directors will allow actors to cheat by reviewing scripts when said actors are really stuck or haven’t reviewed too much the night before.

I am not a nice director.

It’s more fun to see what the group will do when someone forgets his or her cues. So there was a lot of comedy to be had, and I discovered several individuals in my cast are excellent at improvisational sketch comedy and could leave entire audiences in stitches.

Unfortunately, the play I’m directing is not a comedy. Well, it’s not supposed to be. It’s a thriller, all about the great Sherlock Holmes and the evil Hound of the Baskervilles.

One would think a person directing the investigating genius of Sherlock Holmes would remember on what day one needs to vote.

One would be wrong.

On Tuesday, the very second day we were to be off script, I noticed one of my cast members proudly sporting an “I Voted” sticker, and I asked him how he’d managed to get it before we voted the next day.

He gave me a bewildered look and gently explained that it was, in fact, Election Day and that the polls closed at 8 p.m. Unfortunately, our rehearsals go until 8:30 p.m.

So, I raced the cast through its practice. To give the members credit, once they knew of my urgency they tried to keep the practical jokes to a minimum. They didn’t succeed very well, but they tried.

However, we finished early in spite of everything, and I raced out to my car and drove off to my polling place. According to my car clock, my watch and my cell phone, I arrived at my voting station at 7:57 p.m. I raced to the door of the Mat-Su Visitor’s Center.

It was locked.

A nice lady opened it to inform me it was past 8 p.m. and I was too late.

I showed her the time on my cell phone, and she gave me a funny look. I tried to explain about rehearsal schedules and forgetfulness and two toddlers who constantly cause memory deprivation and how I really wanted to vote on Prop. 1. The nice lady slowly backed away from the door and shut it on me with a worried look on her face. The teenager who had been helping me with the play and to whom I was giving a ride home started laughing hysterically.

And I never did get my “I Voted” sticker.

So, I think I’m going to steal it from my actor at tomorrow’s rehearsal. If he had never reminded me by wearing it, I would have never shut down early that evening only to miss voting by mere minutes. Instead, I would have attempted to vote on Wednesday morning. I can only imagine the looks I would have received then.

So, I’m just going to steal the sticker from the man I cast as Dr. Watson. I figure he owes me that sticker so I can staple it to my forehead as a reminder for November’s election.

Fortunately, we will be done with rehearsals by then.

Tiffany Horvath is the mother of two and the stepmother of one. Her husband, Drew, is deployed to Iraq. She writes every Sunday abut life at home for the wife of a deployed soldier.