Isn't
That Special
Written by Lyssa Graham
Once
upon a time there was a smallish city perched on the top
of a sandbar. It wasn’t the prettiest city or the
cleanest or best managed but it was definitely the funkiest
town in the land. The people who lived in the little city
loved it most of the time.
The
people loved the city for lots of reasons – most
of them very good reasons. They loved it because practically
every month there was a party where the people got to
wear costumes, throw beads and drink lots of wicked, wicked
alcohol. The people really like their alcohol. And throwing
beads.
The
people loved the city because it was surrounded by water
that at least eight or five times each year turned a pretty
greenish-blue color. The rest of the year the water was
a muddy brown but the people didn’t care about that.
The blue days made the brown days worth it.
Some
of the people lived in the city because they were born
there. This didn’t really make them any more special
than any of the other people who lived there but it did
make them feel better about things. Some of the people
went to live on the island on purpose. Really!
Some
decided to live on the sandbar precisely because it was
funky and weird. Others decided to live there because
they had good jobs on the sandbar. Some of them lived
in really old homes, some of them lived in really new
homes. Just like the city, the people who lived there
were mostly good, usually a bit weird and happy more often
than not.
All
in all, the city was a pretty good place to live. Sure,
every now and then Mother Nature would leap up and tap
dance on the island like Fred Astaire with a bad case
of ‘roid-rage but since that didn’t happen
very often and the people of the city had memories like
gnats everybody just dealt with Mother Nature and carried
on with their lives. Besides, when the tap dances came,
they were always followed by free ice cubes from the Authorities
and ice cubes are good for keeping wicked, wicked alcohol
cold. Cold alcohol is very important to the people of
the city.
But
some things did make the people unhappy. The people tried
to deal with the unhappy things by choosing seven people
to manage the unhappy things. In order to choose the seven
people, the city was divided into six tiny kingdoms and
each kingdom picked one person to be their spokesperson.
The seventh person was picked by everybody on the island.
Isn’t that a neat system?
Unfortunately,
the people didn’t always pick the brightest, bestest,
smartest people in their little kingdoms to be their spokespeople.
Sometimes they just picked the loudest person to speak
for them. Sometimes they picked the person who made the
most promises. Sometimes it seemed like they just walked
into the voting booth and stabbed blindly at a ballot
with a pencil and hoped for the best. Blame that wicked,
wicked alcohol for those times.
In
fact, the last time the people got together at the voting
booths, so many of the people showed up that they couldn’t
make a decision in three of the six kingdoms. Lots of
the people voted, lots of the people wanted to speak for
their kingdoms and nobody could agree on anything. What
a mess that made for the people of the city.
They
had to plan another party, without costumes or beads or
wicked, wicked alcohol, and try again to pick the three
spokespeople. It was so much fun for the people. Because,
you see, some of the spokespeople candidates were already
doing the job. They were called incumbents. The incumbent
people really thought that they should keep doing their
jobs so they tried very hard to convince the rest of the
people to vote for them.
The
incumbent people did the convincing by trying very hard
to impress the rest of the city and show them how good
the people had it with them as their spokespersons. They
did this by calling special meetings designed to show
the people how much the spokespeople cared. They cared
so much that they didn’t even mind that the city
had to spend money it didn’t have to show the special
meetings on television, pay the city workers to do research
on meaningless questions for the special meetings and
disrupt the actual business of the city so that the incumbent
people could try and look good for the voters. Boy, were
those special meetings fun.
The
incumbents held a special meeting to accuse the city police
of picking on people. That was fun. One of the incumbents
insisted that one of the regular people tell everyone
how bad the police treated him. So he did and guess what
happened? He got arrested on outstanding warrants. How’s
that for irony?
They
tried to hold a special meeting to hold a voting party
at a different place. A place where there would be another
party on the same day – a special party where one
of the incumbent’s likely supporters would be already
there and partying. That would have been so convenient
for the people who liked the incumbent but not so convenient
for the people who didn’t. Luckily, someone smarter
than the incumbents must have talked them out of that
idea.
Fortunately,
the mostly good people of the mostly good city can mostly
see through these silly incumbents. And fortunately the
mostly good people have one more shot at picking the very
bestest spokespeople. This time, maybe the mostly good
people will leave the wicked, wicked alcohol for after
the voting.
Lyssa Graham is a mostly good person living on a sandbar
just outside of Texas. She’ll be voting in the runoff
and hopes you will too. Contact her at Lyssa@LyssaGraham.com
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