A Career Politician

Submitted by Chad:

One of the first things I learned about Michelle was that she was middle-school class president three times in a row.  She was obviously proud of that fact, slipping it into our talks whenever she could.

Sometimes she would say it jokingly, such as during a playful argument: "Well, you must be wrong.  I was middle-school president for three years in a row."

Sometimes she'd be more serious about it.  "I was hoping that being middle-school president for three years straight would be my ticket to popularity and more friends, but in many ways, I was more isolated than ever..."

Michelle, by the way, was 23.  I was 28.  She was just finishing law school, and worked in a law office to support herself.

Once, I made the mistake of asking her, "Did your middle-school executive experience help you land in a better law school?"

She answered, "Yeah.  I wrote one of my application essays all about it."

She seemed pretty level-headed other than this strange obsession, so we progressed to meet-in-person phase pretty quickly.

The date went well, although she seemed shy and not too talkative in person.  It was okay, and somehow or other, we kept things going.

Towards the end of dinner, she asked if she could show me something.  She pulled out a middle-school yearbook.

She had to be kidding.

She wasn't.

She opened it up to the page that had a big picture of her as fourth-grade president.  "This was the best year by far," she told me, and explained that she had enacted a classroom rule that had something to do with students who played sports or something... I actually don't remember.

She went on for about five minutes when I asked her, "Why are you so obsessed with that time of your life?"

She rationalized, "It's normal for people to talk about their past.  It's how you get to know them, right?"

I guess she had a point, but a 23-year-old discussing middle-school politics as if it was the greatest achievement of her life... came across as sad.

I asked her what else she had done that had made her proud.  She just stared at me, trying to think of something.  I prompted her, "Well, you made it to law school, right?"

"Big deal," she said, "Anyone can do that.  How many people can you name that were middle-school class president for three years in a row?"

Trying to seem engaged, I asked her, "Do you have any of the other yearbooks handy?  From the other two years during which you were class president?"

It was an innocent question, I thought.  I had resigned myself to having this be the main topic of conversation with her for the foreseeable future, and I figured that I might as well placate her.

She didn't like this question, though.  She slammed her yearbook shut and muttered that jealous yearbook editors had disrespected her office by putting another person's photo in the "president" spot, someone who had run against her and "should have lost."

I asked, "So... you weren't really president for three years in a row?  Just for one?"

"No!" she shouted, "I was president for three years!  Those fuckers sabotaged the election!  I was president, but they rigged the election so that this other fucking bitch would seem to win.  I was president, no mistake about that.  I was president.  I was president!"

I asked, "But how can you be sure that you didn't just lose?"

It was as if I had slapped her.  She trembled, shook her head, and said, "How dare you... how dare you!"

She gathered herself, slid out from the booth, and said, "You pay for this, fucker," as she stormed out.

I was planning to pay for it anyway, but I'm really glad that she showed her true colors before things progressed any further.

She wrote me an e-mail to apologize.  I replied that I made it a practice to never date politicians, real or fake.  She wrote back a babbling, nasty, incoherent response, and I didn't reply.