Tommy Wells, candidate for city council, rings the doorbell, with him a woman with an SEIU sticker on her shirt. Tommy says that he’s appropriately campaigning with a member of organized labor today on Labor Day.

I tell them that I’ve been thinking about the great Flint Sit-Down Strike today. I greet the woman cheerfully, telling her that I know SEIU stands for the Service Employees International Union. And that they just celebrated their one-hundredth birthday in 2003. Happy birthday, I tell her.

Later research will show me that I’m terribly confused, that I’m actually thinking of the Laborers’ International Union of North America. They are kind, however, and ignore my mistake.

I tell Mr. Wells that, although I like him and appreciate him coming by, I am not a registered Democrat and thus cannot help him on September 12. I’m happy to support him in the general election in November, but for now he needs to speak to the missus.

Handily, she’s just coming around to the front from the back yard. Mr. Wells and Dawn chat for a while.

(A couple days later Dawn will receive in the mail a nice hand-written note from Tommy thanking her for her time and asking for her vote.)