election

I was thinking about how we learn about elections and voting. Some of us are taken to the polls by parents or grandparents, but for most of us we learn about running for office first-hand in school - during student council elections.

The high school that I graduated from, an all-girls Catholic college prep, had a very interesting take on elections. For starters, if you ran, you simply ran for student council, and not a particular office. It seemed pretty odd to me, but it was explained that this took the ugliness out of elections.

Since no one was running for office, there were no posters in the hallway saying "Vote Ashley for President". I am not 100% sure, but I know that campaigning of any kind was kept to a minimum. If we were allowed posters, everyone running was allowed the same space. I want to say though that were weren't allowed posters or buttons or cupcakes or candy.

The one thing I know for sure is that we gave speeches in front of the class. I think my class fit into the Chemistry lab. I think we did it during lunch, but I could be wrong. We had a specific amount of time to explain why we were running, and how we would serve the student council.

Then everyone voted. This is where it got even more interesting. Since as I mentioned, there were no candidates to place under an office, every one's name was simply placed on the ballot. You then ranked your classmates in the order you preferred them, from 1 to the number of candidates.

The candidate who received the lowest number, was asked which position she wanted to hold. Most likely she would choose to be president, but she could pick whichever office she felt suited her. Then the student who got the second lowest number would pick, and so on, until all of the offices were filled. Somehow it worked out, and the person people expected to be president or treasurer, ended up in those roles.

I actually ran for office for my senior year. Of course that meant we held elections in our junior year, earlier than I would have expected. Anyone running for office was required to get a permission slip signed by her parents. It seemed a bit much given that you had not been elected, yet I guess it kept there being problems with someone winning and not be able to serve. It was a good lesson for when I worked in a company that required I get permission to apply for an internal position before I had gotten the job (or the job had even technically been approved by management).

I still remember going into my mother's room to get my permission slip signed. She was still asleep. I didn't want her to make a big deal about my running for student council. I was quite vague about what the permission slip was for. I feared that if I didn't win, I would never hear the end of it. She groaned, but signed it. I did tell her what it was for.

I didn't win. Despite trying to take the politics out of the election, it still boiled down to basic human nature. People voted for the girls they knew and liked. I was the new girl, and as such, an outsider. I talked about new ideas, when my fellow students really were not interested in change. There were only 100 girls in my class, and many had been together for a long time. I was devastated when the call came that I had not won a place on the student council. I think there were only two of in this position. I had also tried out for the flag team, and was the only one not to make it despite having two years of drill team. I was notified of both of these failures on the same evening, and still showed up the next day to school.

My moment did come though. I was made captain of the Academic Decathlon team. I had won over one of the teachers, a nun, and she lobbied for me. Since it was the first year the school had entered, I was put in charge of calling and getting the details. I remember when I met the woman I had spoken with - she was shocked to learn I was a student, and not a teacher.


on the night stand :: Run

setting goals

When I was in high school, my mother's boyfriend, J, used to make me write a list of goals I wanted to accomplish in the next month. I was to write out a list of five or six things I wanted to do on an index card and then he would go over it with me the following month. He would also give me $50, which didn't help how I felt about this little exercise at all.

I really hated doing it. And it was much more than teenage angst or the fact that living with an alcoholic, goals were somewhat foreign to me. It was his way of getting inside my head. It was a way to control. It felt like he wanted this intimacy with me that I felt was very inappropriate. There was a lot about J that I felt was inappropriate though.

I knew better than to flat out refuse. My sister had been banished to the Garden State because she and J did not get along. Yes, ultimately it was my mother's decision, but I knew that her ability to stick to her conviction had a lot to do with J. I will never know, but I suspect that he may have put it that if my sister came back into the picture, he wasn't going to stay (not that he ever lived with us).

At first I kept it to things like school or more educational type goals. Things like read a book. He wanted something more. I tried to make up things, but J wasn't easy to fool. He had been around the block a few times. It was especially hard given, as I mentioned, having goals was a bit foreign to me. At my house the goal was literally to survive.

On some level I knew that this was probably a good thing for me to learn. And I did learn about how to make goals specific so that they would be both attainable and verifiable. For example, saying your goal is to lose weight just sets you up for disaster. For starters what does that mean? How would you know when you achieved your goal? Better to say you want to lose five pounds by the end of the month. This way you know where you are headed and when you get there.

The sad thing is that as much as I learned about goals, I think this experience added to my resistance to them - as if goal setting isn't hard enough already. I am not blaming anyone, just being making connections.

I am a list maker. I am always making to-do lists of some sort. But I find myself often avoiding writing down the tough stuff - the stuff I would rather not do. I often self-filter the things that I am afraid I will fail at.

Being aware is the first step, so I predict that I will get better at this. At least, that is the goal.


tomorrow: cherry pie! with pictures!!

on the night stand :: Lady of the Snakes

why i don't watch television

Last night I was watching 'Brothers & Sisters'. They have introduced a story line about a half-sister that was kept secret. Her mother lied to her about who her real father was, although the mother continued having an affair with him. The daughter has now learned the truth and said something that made no sense. She claimed that she didn't know this man that her mother had an affair with for over twenty years.

I just find that hard to believe. I mean, I wouldn't expect them to be best friends, but to not have had some contact would have been impossible. I speak from experience.

My Mom had an affair for about seven years on and off with a man that we referred to as Bozo. It started when I was about seven, and finally ended when I was fourteen. In between they broke up several times.

Bozo and I never got along. I just didn't have much respect for the man. He had a wife and two children older than my sister and me. To my eight-year old self he was the man responsible for my parents breaking up. I know that this isn't true, but then, it was how it felt.

And of course when I learned that he was in part responsible for my mother deserting us and driving across the country to discover America, he lost a few more points. I was devastated when I learned that he was still in the picture when I arrived in California with my father and sister thinking my family was being reunited. And once again shocked to find him in Southern California after escaping from my father.

Bozo would end up moving in with us, and then getting himself kicked out. He amazingly moved his family to Southern California too. And once again his wife showed up on our doorstep. In between there was almost a half-sibling. And still she took him back again.

He moved in with us again and after getting kicked out again, still showed up at my 8th grade graduation. He ended up in several of the photos, which meant I wasn't able to bring them with me to show my grandmother for fear my father would see them.

When we returned home that summer to a new apartment and our mother announced that Bozo was gone for good, neither of us believed her. It wasn't until the new guy showed up - married, kids, old enough to be her father, and her boss - that we got it. They stuck it out for over a decade. His wife once showed up at our house as the invited guest to a baby shower. Talk about fun times.

on the night stand :: The Mistress's Daughter