Oh, you know. Just running for office. How's your weekend?

Surprise!  Since the last time I wrote anything about the sweet futility of life with two little girls and all the rest of my daily nonsense, I embarked upon a last-minute, write-in campaign to join my town's school committee.  For real.  It was full out for about four days, because that's all the time we had, and we were legitimate contenders for that teeny stretch of time.  We had shirts and signs, we waved at passing cars from the rotary downtown, we handed out flyers at t-ball games and dance studios, we provided stickers for ballots on election day.  Emma murmured, "Go Hawks, go Hawks, go Hawks," while she held her sign, because all of our children have been indoctrinated by our dedication to and fervor for the high school athletic program.  Owen yelled, "Jenny, you're AWESOME!" as Heather drove away from her polling place to bring him to preschool, and Marley and Rudy had free reign to turn our home into a disaster of food and toys and dirt and piles of who-knows-what because Todd (Plouffe) and I were either updating our Facebook campaign page, planning our next strategy, making signs, holding signs, or scheduling others to hold signs and pass out information.  Because I've always wanted to hold a public office.  [Burst of explosive laughter.]  Not really.

 I ran because as the election day grew closer, I heard more and more about the other candidates running.  One was a former high school baseball coach; he was extremely successful because he brought our town state championships, and he was also extremely belligerent, and almost everyone we spoke with over the weekend had a story about him to prove it.  I describe him to others as "your scary grumpy uncle, the one you don't want to be alone with."  That was not, of course, one of my talking points.  I refused to go negative, even in such a short amount of time.  And basically, anyone with a teaspoon of common sense understood that I was jumping in as a desperate attempt to prevent him from earning public office on name recognition alone, which is a none-too-subtle statement of negativity on its own.  And this guy's opponent had done nothing to campaign aside from confounding the community with streams of bewildering opinions at Meet the Candidates nights and a recent Town Meeting.  So once I started to realize that our schools, and their teachers and children, would be on some level monitored, and on many levels, represented, by either a grunting, vengeful stereotype of the baseball coach with a red face that is at best stern and at worst enraged, the coach who never misses an opportunity to berate his team or to throw his hat or the man who home-schooled his children and could best (and kindly) be described as "eccentric," I thought, maybe I should do something about this.

I spent the last twenty-four hours before we announced anything convincing myself.  And the more I considered it, the more I thought that an educated person who's been a student and a teacher in a town she loves, where her children are now attending public school, seems like a pretty good fit for the school committee.  (I also spent that last day encouraging friends to come up with a code name for the campaign because I wanted to announce, "Operation Hawk _______ is in effect," and when Liz (Axelrod) burst out with "Hawk the Vote," we knew it was too good to seclude to text messages amongst those working for the brief campaign.  It went right on the shirts.)

Unfortunately, we learned that even when you have the support of schools and young families, even when the Voice of the Hawks and the town's beloved retired art teacher, assistant hockey coach, and raconteur with roots in town deeper and wider than almost anyone else supports you, three-and-a-half days isn't really enough time to get a successful write-in campaign together.  I did not succeed in, as I had imagined, swooping in at the last minute (wearing the cape that only I could see) to save my town and its schools.  The former baseball coach won, with approximately 800 votes.  I ended up in second with almost 500, which I hear is sort of amazing since the people who voted for me had to actually write my name on the ballot.  So it turns out that a lot of people were fairly enthusiastic about my offer to provide an alternative on election day.

I can't say that I'm devastated by the loss.  I knew that it was a long shot, and on Sunday afternoon, exhausted by all the frantic scheduling and organizing and smiling, I considered that we were all working so hard so that I could win a year of MEETINGS and SUBCOMMITTEES and parental gripes and public scrutiny and complaint.  I would have done my civic duty if I ended up on that board, of course, but town politics have never been even a remote ambition of mine.  So next spring when this one-year vacancy position is up again as a three-year commitment, I'm not sure we'll be needing those shirts again.  But everyone's holding on to them, just in case.