Times Square on Election Night

  

   “I don’t know if I’m the best person to talk to,” he said.

   “Why?” I asked.  

   “I have multiple personalities. You’d have to talk to all of us.”

   “Oh. Did you vote today?”

   “Yeah. Five times.”

     This was the first person that agreed to let me interview him in Times Square on election night. As I first approached the huge monitors showing election coverage, I figured it’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. There were hundreds of people anxiously awaiting the results of the presidential race but apparently only the crazy ones would talk to an undergrad journalist with a radio mic.

      "This microphone is old,” one of the man’s personalities told me.

      I didn’t respond. A crazy person in Times Square was criticizing me in the middle of the night, in the cold, on my birthday. The closest thing I had to a piece of birthday cake was the handful of chocolate covered espresso beans I shoved in my face before leaving my apartment for an endless night of election coverage.

      “You should talk to one of these guys,” the man said, pointing to two guys sitting on either side of him.

       I was shocked this man had friends that weren’t just his other personalities. One of his friends smiled at me.

      “Hi,” I said, “Do you mind answering some questions for me about the election?”

      He smiled at me silently. The man with multiple personalities told me his friend was shy. His other friend was also shy.

      I was going live on the air in a half hour to summarize what the public was saying about the election. They were saying, “No, I don’t want to talk to you.” But I couldn’t say this on the radio.

      I don’t like tourists. I especially don’t like tourists when my job depends on them. There were a bunch of international tourists, who wouldn’t talk to me with the mic rolling, but answered my questions off the record. I met a British couple, a woman from Argentina, and a man from France. They were just there for the experience, and weren’t invested in the outcome. I guess I could agree with them on that. It was my birthday and I just wanted to go home and watch a movie. Democracy doesn’t excite me as much as sleeping a full 9 hours.

       My strategy for the rest of the night was to pick out people who looked like they had all their original teeth. The majority were Obama supporters, and as the states were being called everyone cheered for Obama and booed when Romney won a state. Some people were on the fence, but stuck around to see who would win. Some people were just passing by. Some people wanted a slice of birthday cake and a good night’s sleep.