Tips for Surviving Election Day

By Diane Roberts

I know, y’all, I know: We all want it to be over.

The election, I mean, not Florida State’s execrable football season, painful though it is.




We might succeed in ignoring the hapless Seminoles, but we cannot ignore the election — we can only hope it will be wrapped up in a few days.

OK, maybe a few weeks.

Two or three months, tops.

No matter what, we all need some tips for surviving the shouting, the demonstrating, the tantrum-throwing, the reality-denying, and the lawsuits, which are the habitual response of our fellow citizens when they don’t get their way.

Here you go:

• Buy a couple of cases of Wild Turkey 110.

Do it now. Other people will also have thought of this.

• You may experience extreme nausea, even prolonged vomiting.

Wearing a bucket around your neck will cut down on your dry-cleaning bill.

• Go for a long walk. Maybe to Canada.
• Cheer yourself up with an end-of-the-world-zombies-rule movie binge: “28 Days Later,” “Dawn of the Dead,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Juan of the Dead,” and the great “Dr. Strangelove.”
• Understand that grieving is natural. So are rage, horror, disbelief, despair, and disgust. Allow yourself to feel your feels.
• It’s OK to drink. (See above).
• You will need lots of cookies. I recommend snickerdoodles dipped in grain alcohol and lightly dusted with Xanax.
• Indeed, a couple of pounds of Xanax is a fine idea.
• If your doctor balks at prescribing Xanax, Ketamine, Oxycontin, morphine, or other useful medicine, get yourself some rubber cement to huff.

In a pinch, library paste will afford a small buzz.

• Perform a Swedish Death Clean. Purge your kitchen cabinets of spices from 1973; rid your bookshelves of extraneous and potentially incriminating materials such as novels by Toni Morrison, stories about gay penguins, and anything containing the words “race,” “gender,” “orange,” and “garbage.”

Then attack that closet. Throw out the pants you last wore in college, the dress that’s way too tight, the shirts you thought were cool in 1998.

(Keep the camo — it might come in handy).

The idea is to make room in there for a chair, a decent bottle of Cabernet, a baseball bat, and some of cookies (see above).

You may need to lie low till things settle down.

Assuming things eventually do settle down.

• If it’s safe outside, how about digging a Victory Garden, as they called it in WWII?

You can call it a Defeat Garden if that better reflects your mood.

Plant a fruit tree, some vegetables: A Mexican avocado may soon cost as much as a Volkswagen Jetta.

Not that you’ll be able to afford a Jetta if the tariffs kick in. It’s a German car, so it’ll cost as much as a five-bedroom house.

• Fleeing abroad is an option, assuming your passport is up to date, supplies of jet fuel aren’t interrupted, and martial law isn’t declared right away.

You might research which countries have the best booze (and cookies), which are most welcoming to refugees, and which don’t have extradition treaties with the U.S.

• Take up a new hobby: crocheting, say, or blacksmithing. You could make your own machete.
• Learn a foreign language. Russian is pretty hot right now.
• Write a novel: Just be careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings.
• Consider teaching your children how to track and kill tasty small animals.

Deep fried squirrel is nice. Certain songbirds, too, although it takes a lot of time to pick all the shot out of their tiny bodies.




Possum is plentiful. Stew the meat with a sweet potato to dial down the greasiness.

If you object to arming children, they can use sharpened sticks or pointy rocks.

Just like in olden times!

• Take up witchcraft. In the absence of a functioning legal system, you may need the ability to curse your enemies and harness certain dark spirits.
• Learn a new trade. Many of the old jobs — teacher, doctor, scientist may soon disappear.

I suggest you study the game of football.

If insurrectionists haven’t commandeered the broadcasters by the weekend, there should be a slew of quality games on television.

Unlike a certain team at FSU, some colleges have players who can tackle, throw, run, and catch the ball, actually scoring points.

But if you can design a few smart plays, teach a bunch of 19-year-old boys how to read a clock and how not to interfere with a receiver, why, once the fighting stops, there could be a sweet coaching job available right here in Tallahassee.

If all that fails, assume the crash position. It’s going to be a bumpy landing.

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.