After 12 years in Catholic schools, I can feel guilty for just about anything I've ever thought, said, or done, even decades later. At the moment, I'm feeling guilty for voting for John McCain in Michigan's 2000 Republican primary.

The Michigan Republican primary was open that year, meaning that even registered Democrats (e.g., me) could cast a vote for their favorite Republican. ("Favorite Republican" would be an oxymoron these days.) Since I thought even then that George Bush was, as one columnist delicately put it, "a high-functioning moron," I wrote John McCain's name on the scrap of paper that served as a ballot.

When I see John McCain now, I'm ashamed that I ever voted for him. The malice and lies emanating from his campaign make me nauseous and terrified for my country. And Sarah Palin brings back nasty memories of Melinda P., a "mean girl" whose name proceeded mine in the alphabet in our high school homeroom. Every time she turned around to say something to me, I shook in my desk.

Sometimes I wish that there was a human equivalent of prairie dog holes to hide in until the election is over.

Prairie Dogs, Flatirons Vista Trail, October 5