By the time you read this, you probably already know the results of the mid-term elections. Or perhaps not; nothing works the way it used to, anymore.

The first time I ever worked at a polling place on Election Day, I was in college. As extra credit for a Poli Sci course, I had contacted one of New Haven’s alderwomen and volunteered to work in her office. I liked her politics, so I soon found myself canvassing downtown neighborhoods, and eventually serving as a poll-watcher on Election Day.

As I recall them, my duties involved nothing more complicated than getting to the location before 6 a.m., then sitting quietly and watching other people do all the work as voters came and went. It was dark when I went into the room — a windowless box — and dark when I left. The whole experience was better suited for extra credit in my English class, which at the time was on Existentialist literature. It would have compared well with Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit,” or Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”

My next experience with work at a polling place came after my husband and I had moved to Port Washington. I hadn’t yet gathered up the nerve to actually “man” the tables all day, but I did sign up to be an observer at one location toward the end of the night, and telephone the results to the party chair of my choice.

Something very odd happened that year. At the point in time at which I left my house, for the short drive to my assigned location, Florida was blue, and TV reporters had already projected the Democrat to be the winner.

By the time I got home, just an hour or so later, Florida was red, and the country had entered a period of uproar never to be equaled until 2020… for this was the infamous Gore versus Bush Election, of 2000, and a nation that had grown accustomed to having results announced on Election Night would still be in limbo by Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving! It was unthinkable.

And when the Supreme Court weighed in, in mid-December, and arbitrarily stopped a recount that candidate Gore had had every legal right to demand …well, let’s just say we are still living with the consequences of that.

That was the first time I, for one, had ever heard that the Electoral College (whatever they were) had to actually hold a final vote, by a “date certain” in December, for the election to be official. That was the excuse given by the Supreme Court for intervening — that the date was looming. I’m not saying I still hold a grudge, but, rather than interfere with an election result, I don’t know why the court or the Electoral College didn’t just extend the deadline, like every other college in the world seems able to do (thanking you now, Yale).

There was another consequence, as well. I know it seems like we’ve talked about Red and Blue America since the beginning of time, but it really all dates back to that 2000 switcheroo; I never heard those terms used in that specific way, until then.

And why those two colors? I think some network executive must have said, “No, we’re NOT using red for the Democrats, too many people wrongly call them “Commies” and “Reds” as it is. We’re going to use blue for them, and red for the Republicans.” And so it has been ever since…but sometimes I wonder, how might our lives now be different if the networks had used green and orange, instead?

I finally got enough nerve, and training, to work several elections after that. The more I heard politicians blather about “election fraud,” the more determined I grew that there would be no cheating on my watch. I even got “promoted” to captain of my own table. I was proud of how well we all got along, Democrats and Republicans working together to get through a long day and night. And I was very proud of a nation that peacefully contained so many ethnicities, as reflected by the huge variety of last names in my big book.

2016 is the last time I worked a big national election; by 2020, I was sequestered inside my own house.

Now that I can come out again, I no longer recognize the country I once knew. Bamboo ballots? Dead Venezuelan dictators changing votes? Space lasers? I have trouble believing that the newscasters haven’t changed places with the writers of the Simpsons.

It has actually driven me to prayer. I pray that America recovers from this fever dream, and wakes up into a world where we can once again be civil — if not actually kind — to each other.

That makes it more essential than ever, for me, to leave my desk and go in search of news from The Lighter Side. I will be doing that, both in and out of this column… and writing up what I find, intermittently, when I find it.

See you soon, I hope, on the other side … the Lighter one!