PLEASE DON'T TELL ME!

The End

As I wrote last week, I decided that after a month of willful ignorance, I was going to find out who won this year’s presidential election.

After getting over an initial bout of curiosity in the days immediately following the election, I found that I was actually content not knowing the identity of the winner, but once I decided when I was going to find out (December 4), I started to get excited about knowing.

I’d had plenty of time to think about how I wanted to find out who won, and I ultimately decided that instead of some complicated process, I would just Google “44th President.”

When the time came, I was surprised to discover that I was quite nervous. My body was full of adrenaline, and I experienced the same feeling you get when you’re about to open an important letter or watching the end of a sporting event.

I went to Google.com and typed in “44th President” but paused before clicking on the search button. After four weeks of living my life to avoid one thing, it felt strange to be finally discovering it — and of my own volition.

I clicked.

At the very top of the results, page, in bold letters, I read:

Obama elected 44th President.

And now I knew.

Giving up?

Today is November 29. It’s been 25 days since the election. And I still don’t know who the next president is.

My last post was about the concessions the people in my life are forced to make when I’m around. At the time, I wrote that I was still committed to going to the Inauguration without knowing, despite how much I hated asking friends to make accommodations for me for this project.

A week and a half later, I’ve changed my mind.

I think.

The family I spent Thanksgiving with was aware of PLEASE DON’T TELL ME, and before I came over for dinner, they told me went through their house to remove any magazines, newspapers or anything else that might give away the big secret. They also briefed other family members about the situation and warned them that the topic of presidential politics was off-limits while I was around.

I think they thought I would be pleased with the effort they took to ensure I didn’t find out, and I was…but I also felt that pit-of-your-stomach feeling as I imagined them running around the house looking for copies of NEWSWEEK and the LA Times. When one of them called me just minutes after I departed to inform me that the announcers of the football game we had been watching just discussed the next president seconds after I walked out the door, I felt not relief but resignation. Had my grand vision of an ascetic political life morphed into nothing more than a series of close calls?

I started this project as a reaction to everyone — including myself — who had become obsessed with the results of the election. This week I realized that I’ve become just as obsessed as I was before, only this time it’s centered around not finding out who won. The irony is that it seems like everyone else has moved on — everyone except me.

In the three and a half weeks since Election Day, I’ve learned much about how Americans engage with our democracy, some of it healthy, most of it not. The time that I’ve spent unplugged from most media has taught me things about our national psyche that I would have never figured out on my own. And now, as the awkwardness of this little venture becomes more and more acute, I ask myself how much more I will learn in the coming weeks of electoral ignorance that I haven’t already. The conclusion I’ve come to: not much.

And so, my new goal is to make it to December 4th, a full month after the election. At that point, I will cease what has morphed into an obsessive quest and wait to find out the identity of the president-elect naturally. Rather than actively pursue that information, I’m interested to see where I will encounter it in the course a daily life without restrictions.

My old life.

A day in the life

I went down to Santa Monica to visit a friend I hadn’t seen in awhile. He knew about Please Don’t Tell Me, but his brother/roommate and another friend who were also there didn’t.

When I’m in a situation like that, I hardly ever say something about how I don’t know who won the election.  I think I would feel like kind of a jerk if I did — “Hi, I’m Nathan and I have an announcement to make about what you can and cannot talk about around me,” especially since the election probably won’t come up in general conversation anyway. Instead, I try to pay attention for clues that would indicate the discussion is heading toward politics, in which case it doesn’t feel so arbitrary for me to bring up what I’m doing before they have a chance to reveal the winner.

My friend Nick and I went into the kitchen to talk while his brother and friend sat in front of the television in the other room. I hadn’t been near a TV for a week and a half, so when Nick suggested joining them as there was no place to sit in his kitchen, I said that was fine as long as they weren’t watching CNN or some other news channel. I also asked him to explain to them what I was doing; I figured it would sound better coming from him than from me.

Nick asked me if it was okay if we watched the end of the Trailblazers/Bulls game on ESPN. I said it was fine but asked that he mute the sound in case the announcers talked about politics, especially since the game was such a blow-out. We ended up watching the game without any problems; afterward he turned it to Van Helsing and then the Matrix Reloaded, but we weren’t really paying much attention to them while we talked with each other. At one point I picked up a copy of Sports Illustrated off the coffee table; I was going to page through it but first I handed it to Nick and asked him if it was something I could look at. He checked the issue date — after November 4th — and said it probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

People ask me what the hardest part of not knowing is, and I don’t really have an answer. It’s all hard. But if they were to ask me about the worst part, I would tell them about how much I hate asking people to make silly concessions for me, whether it’s watching a specific channel or muting the sound or checking a magazine before I look at it. On balance, I think it’s all worth it — otherwise I wouldn’t do it, obviously — but every time I’m in a situation like that, I don’t like how it makes me feel.