TORONTO – After turning eighteen over a week ago, Neal Furlong is anxiously looking forward to the upcoming election so he can lie about why he didn’t vote for the very first time in his life.
“I’ve really done my research. Most people say they’re too busy to vote but I want something that really makes me look like I tried to use this treasured civil right, but through no fault of my own, I just couldn’t find the time to fill in a couple of boxes on a piece of paper”, said Furlong as he casually walked past an elementary school where a voting center was clearly marked.
Mr. Furlong began brainstorming alternate reasons why it was impossible for him to vote the day he received his first ever voter card. “That was big, it made me realize the responsibility I had to come up with a really good and totally believable excuse. I couldn’t just say I missed it because I had been watching Netflix. It would be completely irresponsible to say what I am actually planning to do today.”
“For a long time, I thought I was going to tell people that I got food poisoning from a bad piece of quiche, which no one would question because it was so specific. But then I thought, this is your very first election day excuse, you need to make it special.”
Neal also contemplated telling friends and family that he had actually voted but ultimately felt that was just too deceitful.
“Early on I even thought about really voting”, admitted Mr. Furlong. “But none of the candidates inspired me to follow through. Like the guy, you know, with the mouth. Or the woman, who’s all like ‘I’ve got ideas too’. Then I realized that this wasn’t like voting for student council, none of these people will ever decide anything as impactful as the frequency of pizza days.”
“For me, what’s most important is that people think that I care about who’s our President, or whatever. I want to be looked up to as a role model for other young people who have better things to do with their lives than taking part in boring ass democracy.”
At press time Neal had posted on Facebook that he had been taken hostage by a group of assassins and was way too busy fighting to escape their deadly grasp to cast his ballot.
