My aunt Pura at the polling station

I will go vote and I hope you do too. But I won't go first thing, as I used to, in order to "get it over with." If I go first thing, as I used to, I might be picked to be the polling station president, because some of those who were supposed to go didn't. Out of fear or force majeure. Let's imagine you are chosen and wake up with a fever. You wouldn't be able to go to work, and being a polling station president is work. I will hide behind a tree (whose trunk I will have sprayed with hand sanitizer) and wait for the polling stations to be constituted. This time I won't do what I always do: leave the school, very slowly, and smile at the person doing "exit polls" so they'll ask me one. My purpose, always, when I'm asked an exit poll is to lie, in order to help the survey come out wrong.

My aunt Pura has been chosen. I won't go see her to avoid spreading the virus, but I'd like to. The woman doesn't have great mobility, which she combines with an admirable desire to show off. Aunt Pura can't tie her shoes, but she always wears high heels because "I don't know how to go flat." She always wears a tight dress (she doesn't own pants, except for pajama bottoms) and to show the world her "wasp waist" (this, said by Uncle Eusebio) she dons the contraption called a "tubular girdle." She goes to the hairdresser every week to get a bouffant.

I mean by this that when my aunt Pura has to put on the PPE, they will suffer in that school. She won't want to take off her shoes, or roll up her dress, much less destroy her crimped hair by putting a cap on her head. If someone touches her with the noble intention of helping her, she will slap them.

I say nothing about the moment Aunt Pura has to count votes with gloves. Never ever, never, has she been able to open a supermarket bag with gloves. Never. Tense months await us, until it ends.

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