Our deranged POTUS has got me thinking. Hmm…maybe I was the victim of a rigged election. If my fifth grade teacher is still alive I just may have to give her a call, or at least send a strongly worded email. 

Here’s how it went down. April, 1963. I was overwhelmingly elected by my fifth grade class to be its representative on the P.S. 186 Student Council. I had campaigned hard, on the “no more navy bean soup for lunch” platform but already earned popular support and name recognition for my performance as the Cowardly Lion in our class’s production of “The Wizard of Oz.” 

There were smiles all around as the class president read the votes. I had won by a landslide, 32-1. 

Only the guy who played the Tin Man voted against me because he felt my over-the-top delivery of “If I Only Had the Nerve,” clearly upstaged his rather plaintive interpretation of “If I Only Had a Heart, depriving him of the attention of the class cutie, who, incidentally, knocked it out of the park playing Dorothy’s dog, Toto. 

I modestly thanked the class for its support and promised I would be a strong advocate in Student Council, fighting like hell for the right to use Number 3 pencils when Number 2’s were unavailable. That got a big round of support and a ceremonial rubbing of gummy erasers. 

Yes, I was clearly relishing my big victory but the scowl on my teacher’s face merely telegraphed the bomb she was going to drop on me. 

“Edward! I am vetoing your election,” she spat at me. “You talk too much in class and are generally disruptive and that disqualifies you from this honor!”  

It’s true I liked to chat with my classmates and occasionally pull the chair out from some of them as they sat, causing much laughter in room 202 as the poor schlubs splatted their asses on the slick tile floor. After falling for the third time one kid whined at me, asking “why you keep doing that?” I could only reply, “why you so dumb you keep falling for it?” I’ve since had similar conversations with a handful of work supervisors, some of whom took my actions as “bold, out of the box thinking.” 

Well…of course I was incensed at this injustice, as was the class which implored my teacher to reconsider, but she wasn’t budging. I even played the “Lion card” saying my stellar performance bailed out her butt in front of the principal who thought her previous class plays suffered from “tedious treatments of the Industrial Revolution and the invention of lint, blah, blah, blah.” But the production of Oz was so kick ass it drove one parent to exclaim, “A class play that kept me awake!” 

I stewed on being screwed and wrote several notes to the teacher complaining of the injustice and that she had no right to override the class’s clear choice. She just tossed the notes in the waste basket and warned if I kept sending her my strongly worded missives in her next play I would be relegated to a non-speaking role of “Guy tossed by Washington into the Delaware to make room for more salt pork in the boat.” 

Since the Tin Man came in second in the voting, teacher appointed him to the Student Council where he failed miserably..indeed not having the heart for the position nor for the fight against navy bean soup. 

Should I look up my teacher, and if she’s alive, give her a call giving her hell about depriving me of my duly elected position? Probably not. So long ago. Plus, the very next year my sixth grade class elected me to council and I won the school-wide election as Student Council Vice President. But still, I wonder how that call would go…if I only had the nerve….