One last shot at elected office

Since I was not re-elected to the Student Council for my senior year, I felt a void in my life. (Actually, that void came from working too much, but I didn't know that at the time.) I thought that I could make up for it and get out of my early senior funk by becoming the Class President.

I knew my chances were very slight of me winning, but I figured I only had to worry about this one other person running for the office. I turned out to be wrong. A third person ran for President. This was someone who had never become involved in anything in high school, except for maybe Future Farmers of America.

When the election came, we each got to get up in front of the senior class and give a speech. Mine was pretty decent. I had plenty of jokes and the students seemed to like it. However, I still knew there was no way I was going to get elected. When I thought it was just going to be two of us running, I could always say I came in second place. But this third guy was following on the heels of the last senior class President, who was a "cowboy" and had the support of his "cowboy" friends.

The third guy actually won. I was expecing to lose, but I did not expect him to win. That was a real letdown. My mother told me that I and the other candidate probably split the vote and allowed the third guy to come out on top. This was what had happened the previous year. She said that guy who got elected just made a complete mockery of the position and she hoped that wasn't going to happen again with this one.

The only time I got a little jealous of not winning the Presidency was when the Space Shuttle had to make an emergency landing at Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo in 1982. All the senior class presidents in the area got to go there to watch it land. I wish I could have gone. (However, my Main Place boss probably would have made me stay and work that day.)

My Mom was afraid of what the class president would do during the senior banquet because of the fiasco the previous year. However, she said he did really well with his address and did not cause the embarassment that his predecessor did.

In the end, I was glad I didn't win because I found out later that the traditional role of the senior class President is to organize the reunions. I know I never would have wanted to do that. It turns out he didn't do that, either. It was other classmates who wound up putting it all together. This was even though he spent his life after high school living in Artesia.

But it still would have been nice to have won something in high school.