January 25
by Janine Stephenson
My feet hurt. Every single toe has a
blister. I thought it would be good to wear my boots, but the heels were too
high. Now I have a bunch of loose skin on my toe knuckles. And they’re all red.
We did talk to people though, and
people were really nice. No one thought it was weird that we were coming to the
door to talk to them about the campaign. Mrs. Stoutmiller told us that people
would be expecting us. And they were.
Becca and I worked a routine, our
“rap.” It took practice, but we were able to sound polished. It’s not perfect,
but it shouldn’t be perfect.
It should sound like we know we’re
talking about and we’re excited to tell you about it.
This is what happens. You open the
door and I say, “Hi.” and Becca says hello too. And then, we introduce
ourselves. “My name is Janine Stephenson and this is Becca Gaines, and we came
all the way from Madison, Wisconsin to talk to you about Senator Eugene
McCarthy.” And Becca says, “It’s really cold outside, can we come in for a moment
to warm up?” And no one turned us away. A few people pretended not to be home
but we understood. We don’t have our campaign buttons yet, so they probably
thought we worked for President Johnson.
The key to talking to people is to
remind them that we work for Senator EUGENE McCarthy and not JOE McCarthy.
Because evidently, people are getting the two mixed-up. So we either say, The
Senator or Senator Gene McCarthy. But never just Senator McCarthy. At least
right now.
That’s another thing that Ron told
Craig to tell us.
The important part is to tell people
that The Senator is really running and not faking it. He wants to be President.
He’s not going to quit. He’s not preparing the way for Bobby. He’s really
running. And if he was just pretending, we wouldn’t be wasting our time talking
to people about it.
