Another in my series of pointless non-candidate diaries designed to give y'all a break from Hillarobamamania.
This is a story about a revelation. Not one of those "LUKE, I AM YOUR FATHER" revelations; this is more of an "I was in love with you all through seventh grade!" revelation.
This is the story of the birth and demise of a political career.
1974: At the end of 7th grade, I became our junior high school’s Student Body President by running on a platform of, "Elect me, and I’ll try my best to do whatever you want me to do." I narrowly beat Tara Potter* — my chief academic rival, the occasional object of my affection, and the only girl in junior high who would dance the slow dances with me — primarily because Tara ran on a platform of, "Elect me, because God wants me to be your student body president," a strategy which worked 30 years later for George W. Bush, but served Tara poorly.
Nixon resigned that summer. Not many of my pals talked about it, but I did. My best friend Anthony found the subject intensely boring, while my more politically minded friend Glenn liked to defend Nixon just to goad me. I had taken the trouble to record Nixon's resignation speech on my cassette recorder (held up to the TV, microphone adjacent to speaker) but no one wanted to listen to it.
On the first day of 8th Grade, my first day as Student Body President, I found a handwritten note in my locker:
Hobbitfoot resign or else
I decided I was a victim of synchronicity. Anyone elected to SB President would have had to put up with this nonsense. And it persisted all through 8th Grade -- taunts of "Impeach Hobbitfoot!" and "Hobbitfoot, Resign Now!" All because of that bastard, Richard Nixon. And, trust me, there was no other reason for it. I was a good student body president. Our dances made money. We made sure the bands played "Smoke on the Water" and "Black Water" and everyone was happy.
With our profits, we bought a drinking fountain for our quad. This made us the first student council to do anything, ever. We became the paragon by which all future student councils would be measured.
And yet the notes trickled in at regular intervals: stuffed in my pre-algebra book, scooted under my lunch tray, dropped in front of my gym locker.
Naturally, my political rival and sometimes dance partner Tara Potter was my chief suspect. Sure, she continued to dance the slow dances with me — that was just her crafty way of deflecting suspicion. My next suspect was the student council treasurer Calvin Hodgson. Why? Sheer antagonism. I’m pretty sure Cal had an unreasoning hatred of me. Or maybe he was that sarcastic to everyone.
I had other things to distract me that year. I can’t remember who I was in love with, but I was always in love with someone, ever since age 2. That year, I was totally messed up about Lucinda Volare. Right at the end of seventh grade, Lucinda told one of her girlfriends, right in front of me, that she thought I was cute.
You have to understand. Girls tolerated me. Tara Potter danced with me because we were the same height. But up until that point, no girl had ever thought I was cute.
So of course I fantasized about her all summer. Come eighth grade, she wasn’t there. She’d moved.
Only a thirteen-year-old can be destroyed by something like this.
Meanwhile, Tara Potter is dancing slow dances with me, and Rachael Bernstein’s making eyes at me too (well, at least once or twice), and all I can think about is some girl I had never even looked twice at, just because she was unattainable. And how fucked up is that? Adolescence SUCKS.
End of the year: yearbook signing. Greta Sorgaard, a very tall and very gorgeous girl who had never had much to say to me, wrote in my yearbook,
Guess what! It was me writing those notes! Haha, pretty funny, huh?
Sue had the flattest stomach and the hottest belly button of any eighth grader. My sexual fantasies were only beginning to take on a bit of character (having, that year, discovered Xaviera Hollander’s book Xaviera! — thank you, Ron Chung, fellow Berkeleyite, for being a dumpster-diving thirteen-year-old), but I could still see the potential of belly buttons.
Asked why she had messed with my brain all year, Sue stuck to her guns. "I thought it was pretty funny. Didn’t you think it was funny?"
Well, sure. Now I do.
Flash forward 30+ years. I'm talking on the phone to my politically minded friend Glenn, who is now a gay Republican (I'll never understand that.) We found each other again through the blogosphere and it was a hoot talking to him on the phone. Have you ever done that -- talked to someone whom you'd last talked to before puberty? Very odd experience.
So we're reminiscing, and I brought up this whole story, and Glenn said, "What? Are you kidding me? You're kidding me, right?"
It was Glenn** and my best friend Anthony leaving those notes, revenge for my having yammered politics at them all summer long.
Moral of the story? Be careful who you yammer at, perhaps. Or, keep your enemies close but keep your friends closer. Or, don't get all despondent about Lucinda Volare moving away when Rachael Bernstein's busy making eyes at you.
************
* all names changed to protect me from pissed-off people
** or else it was Tessio, all along