Do you have a second?

"Do you have a second ma'am?"
The woman smiles "No, I'm in a hurry" and walks on.

No matter, I just wait, clipboard in hand, for the next person to leave the mall. Anyone leaving to go to the East Shop's carpark has to run dad's and my gauntlet.

The next person I ask stops for a minute to consider.
"Okay, what would you like?"
"Do you know about the smacking bill?"
"Ye-es?"
"What do you think of it"
"Load of c**p!"
"I'm collecting signatures in support of the referendum on this issue, so we can all vote on it, would you like to add yours?"
The man signs, I thank him, and off he goes.

We came here just after lunch, and have been talking to people ever since. Even though I'd never done anything like this before, it didn't take long to get my feet. You breeze on up to someone, and if they stop, they stop, if they don't, they don't. Mostly they don't. But hey, if no one was there asking, no signatures would be collected at all.

There are all sorts of people, and you just can't guess who will sign, and who won't. About two in five stop, and out of those, nine out of ten sign.
The old people are mostly a bit confused; they know they approve normal, light smacks, but not whacks, and they really don't know what the bill did.
One lady was really confused. I mentioned dad, nodding over my shoulder at him-
"Oh, is that your dad?I thought he was your boyfriend..." (yikes!!!)
But she signed it.

Some people didn't know it was law yet. other didn't sign because they didn't have kids, saying it had nothing to do with them.

I did run across people who didn't have a problem with the bill. None of them minded what we were were doing though, and one even signed because she though it was fair that everyone voted. The biggest problem was that so many people were just to busy to stop and give a minute of their time.

But there was positive side too. Many people did sign, and wished us luck! Between us, me and dad have got about 80 signatures in 2 1/2 hours. And that's a small dent in the 15, 000 need in the next two weeks.