The Exhausted Dad: Election Day heartbreak
My seventh grade daughter will try anything new.
I don’t know where she gets the nerve to be a complete novice in front of her peers.
She joined the junior varsity softball team without ever playing softball. She joined the JV basketball team despite never playing on a team before. She plays one instrument in band and a different instrument in jazz band. Now she’s playing tennis. She’d never even picked up a tennis racket before.
Want to see a list of my middle school extracurriculars? Here you go:
1. I helped my mom in her elementary school classroom a few times.
2. I watched “Saved by the Bell” episodes on TBS.
That’s it.
Last week, my daughter ran for class treasurer. She’s an excellent mathematician, so it made sense to me (at least according to my limited understanding about treasurers). The whole family helped with posters. She glued Monopoly money around the borders and had campaign slogans like, “It makes cents.” Because money. Get it?
Despite a crippling fear of public speaking, she also prepared a speech for the schoolwide assembly that would take place just before the election. My wife and I gave her a few ideas, but she wrote all of it by herself. It was a good speech! Very substantive, but she added some funny personal anecdotes and offered some practical campaign promises.
I know my daughter isn’t a “popular” kid at school, but she has a good-sized circle of friends. The other candidates for treasurer: Two other girls and a boy. At first, I thought this would give my daughter a decent chance. A memorable speech could push her over the edge to victory.
She seemed content with the possibility of losing.
“I’ll probably lose, but I’m going to give it a good effort,” she said a few times.
She gave it a GREAT effort. Unfortunately, her dad didn’t tell her about the true nature of politics.
Middle school kids … well, how can I put this kindly? Their brains are still developing. Despite some mild dating behaviors, the boys still align with the boys and the girls with the girls, at least at my daughter’s school anyway.
The candidates were supposed to give campaign speeches. No skits. No Q&As with the audience. Several of the other candidates, however, stretched the limits. Many of the speeches focused on the school’s sports teams (fishing for cheap “Woos” from the audience).
As for the boy in the treasurer race, he went full skit, with a costume based on a popular insurance commercial. Worst of all, he wore sunglasses … inside.
He didn’t talk about the issues. He just wanted laughs. He knew a little razzle dazzle would win over this impressionable bunch.
The boy won. Of course. I blame the patriarchy!
At the very least, middle school boys are going to vote for a middle school boy who wears sunglasses inside and tells everyone, “Woo, football!”
My daughter was heartbroken when she found out she lost.
“I don’t think I would’ve minded if either of the other two girls won. He didn’t even care about it,” she explained.
As a parent, what can you do? The school had spoken. I told my daughter how proud I was of her, and how impressed I was with the amount of work and commitment she put into her campaign.
I reminded her of how much her friends at school supported her. And I reminded her how much her siblings joined in every night over the past week to work on posters, listen to her speech, etc. We all believed in her. We still believe in her.
There’s an episode in season four of “The West Wing,” in which Sam Seaborne (Rob Lowe) is running for Congress in California (Lowe would exit the show after this episode). His colleague and friend Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) joins him for the final week of the campaign. Sam is losing by double digits, and the night before the election, Sam asks why Toby came out to help the campaign when there was no chance of winning.
Toby says, “You’re gonna lose, and you’re gonna lose huge. They’re gonna throw rocks at you, and I wanted to be standing next to you when they did.”
Anyway, I think I backed a winner.
• • •
Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student, and parent to four kids. Ages 6-12. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
The Exhausted Dad