Why I almost didn't vote

Today is Election Day and as my girls - ages 6 and 4 - and I talked about what Election Day was and how women didn't always have the right to vote, I was surprised to find that I got a little teary while we were discussing it. 

I am not a political person and I've never been good at history; dates just don't stick in my brain. So the girls and I googled 'women's sufferage' and found out that the nineteenth amendment was finally ratified in 1920 after a hundred years (Or so I figured after my quick google skimming.) of women being denied. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Even if I am wrong, and it was only 50 years or 20 years of fighting it's still an amazing feat. Cue the teary eyes. I told the girls that women fought very long and very hard to change something that they didn't think was right and it filled me with pride and awe. I have to wonder if I would have done the same thing. Is there anything that I feel so strongly about that I would spend my entire life fighting for it? Obviously not because I'm not doing it. 

And I'll tell you a little secret. I really wasn't planning on voting today. Not until the girls and I talked at breakfast. And I realized that no excuse that I could come up with would be valid. There were women who fought, starved themselves and probably died for this cause and I'm gonna skip it because there might be a line? Um, yeah. Totally lame. So, the little one and I headed to the polls after dropping the big one at the bus and I cast my vote. And there was no line. 

I doubt I'll ever consider myself to be a political person. I won't be watching the returns come in live on TV (More like a DVR'd real housewives of something or other or poker if my husband has the remote) but I exercised my hard won right and apparently encouraged my friends to do the same by posting it on facebook. 

My friend Linda posted this on Facebook today and I thought it was just so perfect!