The day I ran for VP

     I have mentioned before that writing Feels Like the First Time was a time consuming process for me. I started it the first week of December 2006 and finally typed "The End" in May of 2012. Part of the reason for the delay was that I had to finish living the story. The other part of the puzzle, though, was that I had to learn to be  a better writer. For me a huge lesson was what I needed to include in the book and what could safely be left out. 
     At one point, the book swelled to over 106,000 words, which was too long for such a simple love story. That's when my Editor Chris Guthrie and I got out our sharp knives and started cutting.  Much of what went away really needed to go - it just wasn't necessary, or even good.  I still miss a few parts of the story that hit the cutting room floor, though. 
     This blog post is one of those sections. With today's national election in the U.S., I got to thinking about the one and only time I ran for elected office. You can think of this as a Deleted Scene from Feels Like the First Time:


           In May of 1976, at the end of my sophomore year, I decided to run for Student Council.  Looking back at it, I think an excellent question would be “Why in the world would you want to run for Student Council?”  There were no perks, there were a lot of meetings, and being able to say “Hey, I’m the ASB Vice-President” was never known to help you get girls.

            The only reason that I can see is that my best friend Jerry was running for ASB President, and he told me he thought I should run for VP so that “We could run this school!”  Yeah, sure. The truth was, Jerry was smart, (he’d eventually be the class Valedictorian) driven, and much more popular than I was.  It was easy to envision him being elected President, but I was realistic enough to know that if I won, it would probably be because I was riding Jerry’s coattails.

            Chief among Jerry’s many attributes, though, was his ability to draw. He could draw anything, and had the knack for making whatever he tackled  interesting to the eye. I think he knew that I would need more help getting elected than he would, so he went to work drawing some eye-catching posters to hang up in the halls.

            The best poster he made for me was a knock-off of the famous Jaws movie poster (which was pretty current at the time) that showed the snout and huge mouth of the shark with rows and rows of monstrous teeth.  Beneath the shark’s mouth, he wrote “Don’t you want these ‘Jaws’ on your side?  Vote for Shawn for VP!” I think he was playing off the fact that I had a reputation as a talker, but I’m not sure.

            My opponent in the VP race was Clyde Dechant. Clyde was an easy-going, take-it-as-it-comes kid who was a year behind me and always reminded me a little bit of Alfred E. Newman from Mad Magazine. I should have seen the writing on the wall.

            On Election Day, all the candidates were scheduled to stand up in front of an Assembly and deliver a speech.  I was already in my second year of Speech and Debate in Mr. Grimes’ class, so I wasn't really worried about making the speech.  The night before I was supposed to deliver it, I sat on the porch on the side of the house to write the speech. OK, maybe I could have learned not to put off writing a speech until the night before you’re supposed to deliver it, but I was still a teenager!

            It was a perfect spring afternoon when I sat on my parent's side porch to finally write my speech.  The sun was low in the sky, and everything was lit by golden fire. I was sitting on an old recliner that had been my Dad’s until too many layers of duct tape had built up on the seat and it had been relegated to the porch. I just about had the first page of the speech written when Dawn came out to feed her dogs and came over to talk.

            When I told her what I was doing, her eyes lit up, she said “No politician ever writes their own speeches,” and took my notebook away and said “I’m going to be your secretary for the day.”

              Dawn sat on a cedar bench beside me, wearing jeans and a simple white peasant blouse with short sleeves. Her strawberry-blonde hair kept falling across her face, distracting me terribly from the task at hand. She was sitting close to me, and I could feel her nearness. As much as I wanted to, I never so much as brushed her hair away from her beautiful eyes.

            Somehow, we made progress on my speech, even though I wrote it with about five percent of my concentration, and soon it was getting late, and we knew that she would be called in for supper. When Colleen called her home, I watched her slowly walk across the yard toward her house.  It was my secret that I was starting to love her. Later, when we were much closer and we would have been able to discuss these things, I never asked her about these early attractions, so I don’t know if she felt them as well, or if I was alone in that.

            For myself, though, I know that those soft, unspoken thoughts and feelings of love, admiration and simple happiness at being with her, with no pressure for anything else, and with nothing else needed, are among the sweetest memories of my life.

            I delivered the speech we wrote the next day, and got slaughtered at the polls. At the time, it bothered me, because I hate to lose.  In retrospect, it doesn't seem important at all.