Tuesday night Cabell said, “We are going to vote on a class president.”
“Do you want to be the class president?” I asked.
“No,” he replied and returned to his evening activity of whacking a rubber ball with a hockey stick down the hallway from his bedroom to our bedroom.
As I drove the children to school Wednesday morning Cabell announced, “We are going to make these posters for the class president election and I had a great idea for my poster. You know the American flag? Well, in that corner where the stars are I am going to put my picture. Over where the stripes are I am going to put things about mself, like ‘generous’. I am generous because the other day Micah was trying to fit a regular pencil lead into mechanical pencils. I had two mechanical pencils that didn’t work, so I gave them to him. He took them home and didn’t bring them back. I didn’t say anything to him about it. He can just keep them, so I think I can say ‘generous’ on my poster.”
Emma and I agreed that generous was accurate.
On Wednesday night Cabell was jogging up and down the hallway between the bedrooms tossing his football up and down when he stopped to give me a campaign update. “I finished my poster. It turned out pretty good.”
“Would you like to be president of your class?” I pressed him again.
“I don’t know,” he said, “But I think Collier’s going to win.”
“Why do you think Collier’s going to win?” I asked.
“Well, Collier, Terrence and I made an agreement. Terrence is going to vote for me, I am going to vote for Collier and Collier is going to vote for Terrence. But, Nadje said he was going to vote for Collier and Lee is going to vote for himself, so that gives Collier the most votes.”
On Thursday afternoon, Belinda brought Emma and Cabell from school to swim team practice at the YMCA. When I met them at the Y Cabell’s first words were, “I didn’t win.”
“If not you, then who won?” I asked.
“Camilla and Collier tied for president, so they got thrown out. Tempest is president. Then Terrence and I tied for vice-president, so we got thrown out. This girl who just came to our class yesterday was elected vice-president.”
“How could a girl who just came yesterday get elected?” I asked, about as bewildered as he was disappointed. “Nobody even knows her.”
“They voted for her,” he replied with a look of resignation about the will of his fellow third graders.
Little more was said, but his disappointment was apparent. At dinner Emma said, “Don’t worry about school, Cabell, you can be our class president.”
On Saturday Collier came to spend the night at our house. Grammy and Granpa joined us for dinner. Dinner conversation included a review of Emma’s science project which involved her Guinea pig, Little Ann. We discussed the news of the day which was the sudden resignation of Newt Gingrich and the coincidence of the death of the newt in our viquarium on the same day. The death and the demise of the newts brought us to the odd nature of politics which had certainly been demonstrated in the third grade class elections of the week.
“What did you think of your class election?” Frank asked Collier.
“I didn’t win, Collier reported the familiar news to us. “I was tied with Camilla for being president, but because we were tied Mrs. Mitchell threw us out and went down to the third person and that was Tempest. So Tempest is the president.”
“Tempest is nice,” I said, “But I think it is an odd democratic process to just throw out the two top people because they tied.”
“Cabell and Terrence tied, too.” Collier went on, “So she threw that out and the new girl is the vice-president.”
“I just don’t get that,” said Frank. “I just don’t see how someone who came to the class this week could be the class vice-president. What is the new girl’s name?”
Cabell and Collier thought for a minute, then Cabell said, “Destin- Destiny.”
“Oh,” I said, my mind instantly clear of confusion, “It was Destiny. That’s politics for you.”
The American Heritage Dictionary says, “Destiny: The preordained or inevitable course of events considered as something beyond the power or control of man,” or, as in this case, “This power personified or regarded as a goddess.”
Cabell felt a lot better when he realized that there wasn’t enough generosity in the world to overcome Destiny.