If you live in Massachusetts, you are most likely glad the campaign to fill the U.S. Senate seat is over.  Chances are if your phone rang in the last five days, it was one of those really annoying automated calls from one of the candidates.  Don’t you just hate them?

Rarely do they come at a convenient time, although there really isn’t one when it comes to those calls.  During dinner, or just after, or even at 8:45, when the day is supposed to be over, you’ve decompressed, and are curled up with a good book.

Admittedly, we follow politics in our house.  We read newspapers, hard copy and electronic, and we listen to the news.  We know that the “Kennedy seat” is about to be filled, and we’ve heard the pundits opine about the significance of the results either way.

But, one of the sacred and private aspects of our life, our cell phones, has been violated.  At 8:41 pm, Sunday evening, mine rang.  The only people I’ve given that number to are my wife, my children, and one co-worker.

My daughters know I retire early.  By 8:41 on Sunday evenings, I’m usually asleep.  If my phone rings after that, it had better be important.

So when it rang Sunday night, and like the first thing that pops into any father’s head when the phone rings like that, I feared it might be bad news.  It was, but not quite the kind I expected.  As soon as I ascertained who and what it was, I immediately added the number to the automatic reject list on the cell phone, and hung up.

Over this past weekend, our land line and our respective cell phones received a total of nine (9) campaign calls as between the Scott Brown and the Martha Coakley camps.  I listened to one of each, all earnest and sincere, warning of dire consequences if the other candidate won, and promising great things if only I would give them my vote.  I didn’t listen to any of the rest, and deleted them from the answering machine as quickly as was possible, irked that my peaceful weekend had been disturbed.

If it had been a “live” person on the other end who was in a position to pass on my reply directly to the candidate for whom they were calling, I would have told each of them:

1.  If you are elected, you will be one of 100, and a junior senator at that;
2.  You will not be in a position to deliver a single thing of meaning to me – - not health care reform, not an end to the war in Afghanistan, not an economic turn-around, nothing.
3.  Never mind your ten word sound bites; what I want to know is what  your next 100 words, next 1,000 words, are.
4.  Mr. Brown, just exactly what does “The People’s Seat” really mean?
5.  Ms. Coakley, how could you shame Senator Kennedy’s memory and many accomplishments in the U.S. Senate by running such a miserable excuse of a campaign?

As it was, these calls were just annoying, intrusive and of less substance than a popcorn fart.

The political significance of the outcome will fill pages and pages of newspapers and blogs and radio/cable air waves for a few days.  Martha Coakley will return to the Attorney General’s office, red-faced and embarrassed as she should be.  Scott Brown will smile well and truly when he’s sworn in as the new junior Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and receive the “hail fellow well met” greeting from his Republican colleagues in the Senate, before learning what it really means to be the junior-est member of that body.

Things will pretty much remain the same in my daily life, struggling to make ends meet, enjoying the company of my children and grandson, reading a good book, writing a few words from time to time.  The outcome of this election won’t affect any meaningful change, and it would not have even if the results had been different.

Well, actually, that’s not quite true.  No more of those damn phone calls – - now that’s change we can believe in.