Picture this: It’s 2016, Harambe just died, an app called Musical.ly was taking the world by storm, and there’s one thing that everyone is asking: Hillary or Trump?
Now imagine you’re in eighth grade and have to write a harrowing two-paragraph essay about the campaigns for your required government class. While it was all fun and games out on the field during lunch, in history class, it was war, and I was on the good side.
Look, 2024 is fun and all, but I just miss arguing with other middle schoolers who also didn’t know what they were talking about. There’s nothing quite like the high of parroting exactly what your parents told you over the dinner table at home to prove your knowledge. I couldn’t vote, drive, or have a job, but I knew I supported raising import tariffs on foreign goods. And my teacher even gave me a gold star for writing that on a worksheet!
Voting day used to feel like a holiday: spending the entire class period watching MSNBC, playing with the electoral college map on 270ToWin.com, figuring out what the hell a swing state was. It just sucks that now I have to actually go to polling places and vote for boring things like propositions and senators instead of arguing with closeted-gay 13-year-old Trump supporters. I miss when asking my friends who their parents voted for was fun instead of yikes. Now, the heavy, heavy burden of American citizenship requires me to enact my civic duty, and Pokémon GO to the polls myself. Yay, democracy.