Malts in the Cafeteria
A presidential election lost.
When I was in sixth grade, three of my classmates and I ran for student council president. The entire student body would vote, and the one with the most votes would be president; second-most vice president; third, secretary; and fourth, treasurer. Looking back, I suppose the other three offices were mostly for show. There was little opportunity for us to manage a lot of cash. The vice president was only there in case the president was sick and unable to fulfill the obligations of the office. The presidency was the only job that really mattered, and that was the job I wanted.
I hope you’ll believe me when I say I was motivated by only the purest intentions — I sincerely wanted to make the school a better place. I put a lot of time and thought into my speech and carefully selected an outfit to wear.
I realize now that my ideas for leading the school through the 1976-77 school year were nothing monumental. I wanted to place a suggestion box in the library so any student could make his or her ideas known; I wanted to start a student newspaper. Maybe there was something in the speech about soliciting student volunteers to pick up litter from the playground, and that the big kids should be deterred from bullying the little kids. At the time it seemed like a solid platform.
On Election Day, I wore my white sweater with a hand-lettered campaign button pinned over my heart. We gave our speeches at a podium set up at the front of the cafeteria.
Todd, a red-haired, freckled boy on whom I’d had a crush since fourth grade, gave his speech first. It (unlike him) was nothing remarkable. Though my heart was still loyal and he was definitely the cutest boy in our class, he was not, I decided, presidential material. My best friend, Debbie, gave her speech next. She was a worthier opponent, and prettier than me, but still I felt confident, thinking I had a real shot at the power seat at Sharonville Elementary. I knew Debbie really wanted to be class secretary, but since there was just the one election, she was hoping for third place in the popular vote.
Campaign Promise Turns the Tide
Then it was Chris’s turn. I remember just one sentence from his speech, but it was the sentence that torpedoed my dreams of the presidency: “Elect me and we will have malts in the cafeteria … every day!”
Now, really — frozen chocolate malts were a coveted treat. They cost a quarter extra, and the cafeteria ladies put them on the lunch menu maybe twice a month. To blithely suggest that it was within the student council president’s authority to open the floodgates and provide unlimited chocolate malts was … irresponsible.
But it didn’t matter, as long as the voters believed it.
My carefully thought-out speech was lost to the ages. Nothing I said would have mattered at that point. Chris had the election in the bag.
Chicanery! I was indignant, and even though the word chicanery wasn’t in my vocabulary at the time, I had just been schooled on the concept.
When the votes were tallied, the results were announced over the school public-address system. Chris had been elected president, I was vice president, Debbie was secretary, and Todd treasurer.
A month after our inauguration it became painfully clear that Chris could not deliver on his campaign promise, and his approval rating plunged. Hobbled by the bureaucracy in the cafeteria, he resigned office before he could be impeached. As vice president I assumed the president’s duties, and the suggestion box was installed in the library.
Malts in the cafeteria. Every time a politician makes a promise, that’s what I hear. It’s all just malts in the cafeteria.
Comment by Fat Man Don on 2 August 2010:
Why is this not obvious to the public at large???
Comment by Anthony Lima on 2 August 2010:
People believe there is a god running the show. They will believe anything.
Comment by Aquila on 2 August 2010:
I’m still waiting for a politician to run on the platform of “Free beer for the masses!”
Comment by Drik on 2 August 2010:
When things function is a regular way for a period of time, no matter how abnormal that way is, people will assume that the abnormal is the “way it’s s’posed to be”. We are just finishing the end of a 50 year abnormally wet period in the western part of the US. When Zane Grey wrote his novels about Texas a hundred years ago, he painted a verbal picture of a particular climate. When John Ford set up to make western movies, he could not find any places in Texas that still looked like the vignettes of Grey’s novel. Had to do it in Arizona and Utah. A pilot friend related flying across Texas around 1930 and the only thing green he saw on the whole trip was right along the rivers. Not now.
Our weather patterns had been abnormally altered by the mini-ice age running 300 years till about 1850, and then getting warmer since then. Cold enough to drive the vikings out of Greenland, but getting warmer for the past 160 years. Unfortunately, our weather records only go back for 110 years, so we’re all geared up to view this short period of observation as normal, no matter how limited our vision. Like the blindmen and the elephant. Shakes people up to have this limited vision seem threatened, even if it is not normal. Gets harder to cope with change as we age.
We are as a species, overwhelmingly drawn to someone who promises to “fix” the problem, no matter that it it not one that can be fixed.
Comment by TTE on 2 August 2010:
I’m pleasantly surprised that Chris didn’t argue that the lack of free malts was the fault of the cafeteria workers and it was only thanks to him that malts still existed at all. Maybe his rhetorical skills weren’t up to the task.
Comment by john on 2 August 2010:
I just want to comment on the column in general. It was beautiful, and a reminder of how we were schooled by ‘chicanery’ in our early teen years. It brought back a bunch of memories.
Thanks, Tracy.☺
john
Comment by James Madison Fan on 2 August 2010:
Ms. Lawson put up a suggestion box per her campaign promise. Well done.
My question is did administration ever read the suggestions much less act on them? Likely not. For all she knows that same box if it remains in the library to this day contains slips of paper dating back to 1976.
I don’t fear politicians like Chris because their fraud is obvious. It is the suble subversion of a noble cause that frightens me.
Comment by Marie on 2 August 2010:
Bravo, Tracy. Way to take a complex issue and distill it so that it can be talked about at all levels, and more than that, remembered. I hope to read more of your life observations soon.
Comment by Moe on 2 August 2010:
Ahhh. The sugary promises of politicians at election time. If only they were promising chocolate malts and not healthcare reform, wall street bailouts, amnesty, economic recovery, etc., etc.! Ha!
Comment by Robert on 2 August 2010:
If only Obama…oops, I meant Chris (and all his ilk) were sufficiently challenged at the point of the infraction. Most powerless people seek a shelter under which they may safely abdicate responsibility to reason and accountability for the unintended consequences of their (in)action. H.L. Mencken said it well; to wit: “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” Fortunately for your class, justice prevailed and the trouble self corrected; and for now, we must endure the continuing saga of a people made whole by belief in super-sized malts delivered FREE to every man, woman and child. Sheesh! Nice job Tracy…I loved the mental image of Chris taking his just desserts:)
Comment by Blue Door Editorial on 3 August 2010:
Well done Tracy!
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Comment by Ralph on 7 August 2010:
Way to bring politics at large into an understandable image. Wonder if Chris had promised no more tests would the kids still have voted him in? Is there a point where people finally realize that the promises usually are not able to be delivered or can be at a steep cost….. Vote them out. period.
Comment by Cheryl on 10 August 2010:
What a thoughtful and well-written article! It was not only a joy to read, but made a point that we should all keep in mind each time we see a TV spot for any candidate running for office or doing a speaking engagement.
I’d love to read more by this author!