While holding my totem at the corner of the Charlotte School campus during the 2022 election, my group and I were approached by a young lady who introduced herself as Angela. I will call her a “volunteer intern” and explain why in a moment.
She had a plastic pumpkin bucket and said, “Would you like one,” and I was the only one among us to say yes. Looking inside and only seeing Tootsie Rolls, which I consider to be fake chocolate, I was disappointed. Being a rep candidate, I didn’t want to appear rude by changing my mind, so I took one, said thanks, and put it in my pocket. It later wound up inside the interior driver door handle until I did some recent spring cleaning in my car.
Following the Tootsie Roll offer was some small talk between me, Angela, and a few others. Angela was asked if she voted in Ward 2 as it was unclear if she was 18 or not at that point. It was a yes or no question, but word salad was served. She indicated that she was too young to vote and implied residency in Ward 2, but just for a few minutes until additional probing questions were asked. She later claimed to be a Hollis HS student, which spawned some interesting discussion. When asked what she was doing in Nashua or who she was working for, she toggled back and forth with her use of the words “volunteer” and “intern” interchangeably. She also said that her dad works for the Union Leader.
While I was more puzzled by her deer-in-the-headlights look when I made a few comments about Nackey Loeb and Kevin Landrigan, a clear indicator of her unfamiliarity with such well-known figures, I didn’t see the forest from the trees. It was unclear if she was a volunteer(an uncompensated worker, by my definition), an intern(someone receiving school credit for performing a task, also by my crude definition), or both!
Because the situation, as perceived at the time, did not pass the smell test, some texts, phone calls, and emails were sent to look into it. I was later told that a former Hollis rep went to their high school and asked some questions, and the principal actually looked into it and also had some questions. Sorry to disappoint anyone expecting a juicy outcome, but nothing exciting came of it other than that I still have the keepsake from that day, the Tootsie Roll.
My late grandmother, a member of the Tom Brokaw-dubbed Greatest Generation, was the first person to ever say(to me), “Waste not, want not.” As a serial question-asking kid, I had to ask what that meant, and most adults in the English-speaking world knew the answer. My grandmother came from a large Irish Catholic family in working-class Roxbury; hence the thrifty values from her cohort, and her birthday was earlier this month. Shucks, I missed it.
However, there is another birthday coming up this month belonging to another Roxbury native, Ms Melanie Levesque.
What better way to honor my grandmother’s words “waste not, want not” with regard to Angela’s souvenir Tootsie Roll than to make some “kitty litter cake” on Monday, May 20? Meow.
