My Life in Politics

This is a story about cut-ups and honor-society students. It all happened many years ago, so I’m sorry if I get any details wrong. It all started in about fifth grade. True, I failed to learn how to read music that year. But that year I also wrote a series of verses about my classmates. They were simple, each of them involved rhyming a last name. One was “Billy Wensel is skinny as a pencil.” Billy resented it when he heard it, which seemed unfortunate to me, because it was probably the best of all the lines I had written.

Years passed. And it so happened that in high school Billy Wensel was still a classmate, and a good student. He was homeroom representative for Sophomore year. I noticed that whenever he gave a report to the class about the doings of the student council he said “um” before each sentence. It bugged me. Anyway, after serving as representative that year, he announced: “Um. There will be an election for next year’s representative.”

I decided to run against him. Now, I had nothing against him. It was just fate that he was my opponent. I gave my short speech: “Fee Fie Foe fum, I’ll say no sentences beginning with ‘um’.” That was the only plank in my platform. I didn’t use the slogan “Billy Wensel is skinny as a pencil” because I thought it might seem childish. I took the high road, used restraint, and figured it would cost me the election. I was amazed when I won.

Anyway, after serving in an undistinguished way as homeroom rep for Junior year, very self-consciously omitting all ‘um’s from my reports, it was time for the student council to announce that campaigns to elect next year’s roster of officers were about to begin. And, surprising myself, I said I would run for president.

Now why I would ever want to be a candidate is a mystery to me. To be funny? Or because I envied the ruling class and wanted them to notice me and not slight me? Or so they wouldn’t take for granted the common man, in general? Was it because in America anybody could be anything—senator, governor, even president? In any case I see my folly now—I now respect the fact that serious students, not class clowns, really are most likely to do a good job leading. I hold no resentment now if the serious students ever slighted me, and I hope they forgive me if I ever insulted them, as sometimes happens in the heat of a campaign, or during a nerve-wracking ordeal like four years of high school. As you can see, I stand before you a humbled man. Life is a great teacher.

I can’t believe I’m making a political speech like this after all these years. Maybe this is the speech I couldn’t give on campaign day, standing on that soapbox between the cafeteria and the girls’ locker room, when nothing came out of my mouth. Really. That day is foggy in my memory. I honestly don’t know how it went down. I can only guess. Following is the most likely scenario:

We candidates were assigned locations around the school. I was given a soapbox near where the smokers were allowed to stand around after lunch. It was a spot well known to me. It was a place of many cigarette butts. There, we would congregate, flip coins, playing “odd man wins,” and tell jokes. Sometimes one of us would fold down the top of an empty half-pint milk container and stomp on it, making it pop like a gunshot. That would surprise the girls in the locker room and on rare occasions one of them would lose balance, drop a towel and step toward the frosted windows so we could see the goddess’s bare shape a little better.

But that day, as twilight fell, the moment had come and excitement was mounting. I now feel great sympathy for busy candidates who don’t have time to write their own speeches and so use ghostwriters. I was not busy, though. My problem was I had no message, no idea, no nothing. I was speechless, literally. I was just one of the guys smoking, a smoker among smokers. Because I had forgotten to write a speech, and I had nothing to say anyway, I was in no mood to bluff. I stood on the soapbox and looked out at the hopeful faces, and finally admitted my problem, “Friends, I stand here before you, knowing I have nothing to say. Nothing that you don’t already know.” And I bowed my head. I thought that was the end of my campaign, and the end of my political career. Little did I know that my campaign manager was brilliantly prepared to save the day in such an emergency. He picked up the thread, speaking into the mike without skipping a beat:

“Jackson is too modest. He has a great platform. True, he has nothing to say you don’t already know. And what do you know, and I know, and what does Jackson know? That this school could treat you better—yes—it could respect your needs!” His words hit a nerve. Smokers and jokers congregating there roared with applause and cheers. I looked up, stunned. My campaign manager, who shall go nameless because I can’t remember who he was, was an avid gambler. He had gambled that moment, and won. He continued:

“The school’s policy is ‘heads I win, tails you lose.’ You have the common sense to realize that. The school has all the decks stacked. Real power in this school is in the hands of a few. But Jackson can change that, if anyone can. In fact we’ll make change with Jackson as president.” Some in the crowd repeated the phrase “We’ll make change,” and laughed. I assumed “We’ll make change” was a promise to make change for noontime gamblers who had only paper money and needed nickles, dimes and quarters. My campaign manager went on:

“With Jackson as president it will be ‘odd man wins’ every day—all of you will be big winners with new chances here. Jackson’s platform is more bold and innovative than anyone else’s. It’s a huge opportunity for you to be supporters of his. When he’s class president he will never let you down!” The crowd looked at me, and all I could do was nod. They cheered, “We’ll make change! Jackson for President!” My manager went on to say we would make gambling a part of the school day, with blackjack tables in the smoking area. Anyway, all the class clowns and cut-ups cheered, and my campaign manager and I left, as if we had other fish to fry. Ordinary smokers and jokers always have time to kill, but as I learned on that day, candidates are always on the run. Being important means being busy, or at least giving that impression.

The next day in my eventful candidacy, I wore prescription sunglasses to school, probably because I lost or broke my regular glasses. But it could have been just to see if I could get away with it. Or maybe I felt that a person of my standing had earned the right. Anyway, because shades were against school regulations, I was soon called into Father Vuellner’s office. Vuellner was the dean of Boys. He asked me what I thought I was doing wearing dark glasses, and I repeated a phrase an upperclassman had told me: “Father, my pupils won’t dilate, so I have to wear these.”

“Oh, I see,” he said. "I'm sure you'll bring in a doctor's note tomorrow."

Great, I thought. More work for my campaign manager to do. I was not sure how good he was at forgery, but I was pretty sure it was probably not a very presidential activity for a respected candidate such as myself to undertake autographing bogus documents.

“By the way,” he said, “I hear you’re running for class president.”

I gulped, and I admitted I was.

He leaned back and said, “Father Kildner tells me you fool around and goof off, then come up smelling like roses. That’s your M.O. He can’t figure out how you do it. But I have reason to believe that if you win, the principal will blackball you. So if you run as the populist candidate, ‘just plain Bill, the common man and the cut-up’s pal,’ you might just get enough votes to win. But seriously, my advice is to drop out now. Because whatever happens, Father O’Fogarty will surely blackball you.”

“Why?” I asked. Harkening back to my campaign manager’s speech, I said, “This could be a huge opportunity for the students to elect a new kind of president.”

“You mean a huge opportunity to defraud gamblers on a larger scale?”

“What? Defraud?” I wondered if he knew I cheated a few times playing “Odd man wins.” I asked him: “To defraud—doesn’t that mean to remove fraud?”

“Never mind that. I’m telling you about this problem of getting blackballed officially by the principal. Your whole program of ‘We’ll make change’ is certain to be blackballed. To set up poker tables is not this school’s idea of a platform. Change is not wanted here. We have enough, in fact, too much already. And if you give the boys sanctioned gambling during lunch, what about the girls? What does your platform offer them?” I hadn’t thought of that. My mind was a blank. This was my moment for negotiations, but without my campaign manager I was silent as a rock.

No one had ever talked to me like this before—I was being taken seriously.

I said nothing. Negotiations were at a standstill. We sat there in silence. I wondered if the school had sent spies to listen to each candidate. An operative seemed to have reported my campaign manager’s speech to Vuellner. What had scared the school? That my party would gather a powerful coalition of expelled students, misfits, Harley boys and disgruntled alumni to campaign for me? That the gambling would get out of hand and be taken over by the Mafia? The power of populism? What was populism? And what did it mean to be “blackballed”?

The bell rang, time to go to class, an excuse to leave.

As I left the Dean’s office he pointed to the sunglasses and said, “If you can’t handle the hard stuff, you shouldn’t drink it.”

Again I gulped, and silently scurried off.

I decided to go right to the library to research two words: populist and blackball.

Then I remembered that I was banned from the library for playing catch with the grotesquely large 25 pound dictionary. So instead I dispatched my campaign manager to interrupt the honor roll students hanging out near in the chapel doorway quietly discussing the merits of their slide-rules, and ask them what populist and blackball meant. When I found out what populist meant I was encouraged. But when I heard what blackball meant (“boycott, shut out, ostracize”) I conferred with my rather underdeveloped ideas of dignity and self-preservation, and decided to retire officially from politics. And I’ve never looked back.

But my greatest political experience came the next day at the monthly school assembly. As the principal tried to begin announcements, contrarian cut-up classmates who had heard of my fate chanted: “We want Jackson! He’ll make change!” and one of Jogues High School’s all time greatest athletes, laughingly hoisted me up on his shoulders, for fun, and to get the faculty’s goats, I guess. “We want Jackson!” Other kids stood up and chanted, too.

Now that I was all washed up I was more popular than I had ever been in my life. I avoided looking toward Father O’Fogarty. I waved to Father Kildner from up there on the athlete’s strong shoulders, because I fely he understood me. I came up smelling like Roses, like he said. For a brief moment I knew the roar of glory in high school, where it was as rare as a snowbird in hell.

Still wearing shades, I looked down upon the other candidates wistfully, with a kindly bemusement, a sadder but wiser man, because I had seen how things are done in the back rooms of politics. (Father Vuellner’s office was near the back of the school, overlooking the smokers area behind the cafeteria. He could have heard my campaign manager’s speech from there.)

As soon as order was restored and the assembly was over, the frontrunner honor society candidate for president approached me, asking, “Bill! Will you ask your supporters to throw their votes my way?” Today I would say, “What’s it worth to you?” But that day, supposing I would sway no one, I generously said, “OK, if not today, tomorrow,” and he thanked me and hurried away to garner more support.

Now, fifty years later, I gladly admit that serious students are probably better at administering a student council than cut-ups. I hope all concerned, including Billy Wensel, can forgive my youthful impudence. (I even admit that I myself was probably skinny as a pencil in 5th grade, and my couplet was a ruse to draw attention away from myself. It’s no fun being pencil-thin. Although today that’s no longer a problem.)

My wish is simple, friends. I hope a peace-pipe and a handshake can bridge the cut-ups and the serious students, uniting them in their common interests and pursuits. I hope that burying the battle-ax and holding out the olive branch can portend better days. For I can see a time not far off, when smokers and jokers, jocks and honor society students will all work together in peace and harmony. It’s not only the gamblers who need change. God bless America, and let’s have a ball. Good night, and God bless us all.

Let's block ads! (Why?)

from Poker