Assassination Attempt
The timeline is foggy, but the highlights go like this:
My mom used to sing Beatles tunes and I learned about John Lennon.
I saw the I Have a Dream speech and then learned about Martin Luther King.
My grandpa—we called him Bud—let me beat him at poker and gave me rolls of pennies, and I learned about Abraham Lincoln.
The word assassination came up, and when I asked what it meant, somebody told me—in a wildly poor choice of words—that assassinations are what happen to great men. Okay, I thought to myself, when I grow up, I want to be assassinated.
I mentioned this aspiration to a second cousin or a distant uncle at some family thing, and he said—in contention for the worst advice I’ve ever received—that I should run for public office. So in elementary school, the time came to run for student class president of the sixth grade, which meant I would be throwing my hat in the ring to make big decisions, like which playground upgrades to approve, whether or not to launch an investigation specific to the lunch lady’s peculiar odor, or how to tax the black market economy of baseball cards and Tootsie Rolls.
I ran a pretty lackluster campaign. I made posters, but they were hardly catchy or even imaginative. “Norm for Prez,” one said, written in various neon colors. I must have thought that “z” was pretty god damn subversive, seductive even. I hung that poster up on a stucco wall with scotch tape. It maybe lasted a full sixteen or seventeen minutes before it fell off and the janitor added it to the dumpster.
A third grade teacher asked me about my campaign. “Are you going to keep your promises?”
“Sure,” I said.
“What promises are you making?”
“Um…”
“I guess it’s easy to keep promises if you don’t make any.” That made sense to my 11-year-old ego.
The student running against me was a girl we’ll call Maggie. She was bright—a nerdy sort of brainiac who would end up going to Harvard for college. Her parents didn’t let her watch tv. They made her practice violin or read. She played competitive tennis and regarded an A- on any assignment as abject failure. Also, she was kind and sweet, even to the obnoxious kid who perpetually had snot leaking from his nose.
I hated her. I was sure she would die tragically someday, attacked by rabid raccoons or having slipped and fallen into a vat of hydrochloric acid, and nobody would attend her funeral. I have these thoughts about people who seem too perfect. Margot Robbie, for instance—I hope she has halitosis. Or Denzel Washington—I hope he has an incurable fungus on his inner thighs.
Smart, accomplished, kind—I was confident the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders of J. Hayman Elementary school would see right through her and elect me as their leader in a landslide. All I had to do was get through the speech and then let them count the votes.
Maggie gave her speech first. She spoke Mandarin at home, and English was her second language. Another advantage to me. Except, no, she was erudite and articulate, and she had great ideas.
She said she had already spoken to our beloved janitor—the one who swept my half-assed campaign sign into the trash—and was working with him to cool the water temperature in the drinking fountains. She said she was working with the principal to improve the quality of school assemblies. She said she had plans to rework the bell schedule so that we could get more time at recess to recharge. Students cheered for her. Teachers nodded at each other, as if to say, “Get a load of this little Eleanor Roosevelt.” She finished her speech and the principal said, “This young woman might put me out of a job.”
Then he called me to the podium. My speech wasn’t nearly as thoughtful. In fact, it basically amounted to me saying, “I want to be president, so you should elect me president.” It was a page of writing that was about fourteen variations of that sentiment.
When I got to the microphone, I looked out and saw a sea of prepubescent faces who were clearly not undecided voters. They were just waiting to cast their vote for Maggie. My speech was essentially a formality at this point.
“Um…” I said.
But nothing came out. The more I looked up at my peers, all the teachers, my principal—the further the words seemed to slip away. My teacher twirled her finger in the air, as if to say, “Let’s go, bub, you’re cutting into my smoke break.”
And then I noticed the obnoxious kid, the one with the never-ending stream of snot slipping from his nostrils. He was shaking his head, pitying me. He was pitying me.
Finally, I saw Maggie, her eyes bright and wide, slowly nodding, as if to say, “Come on, Norm, you can do this. I’m right here. You have all of my support.”
What a rotten bitch.
Okay, obviously she was not a rotten bitch. I was the rotten bitch. Unprepared, cocky, lazy, and more terrified than I had ever been. When I finally looked down at my speech, I couldn’t see it. My hands were shaking so badly that I couldn’t read my own writing. And it was so quiet that I could hear my own heartbeat.
After another minute or so of world-class cringe, the principal gave me the hook, putting me and everyone else out of our collective misery. Clearly, I was not cut out for assassination-level greatness. A public display of social and political suicide, though? That I could do.
I lost, of course. I didn’t want to congratulate Maggie, being eleven years old and heartbroken by my own ineptitude. But I remember some stupid adult saying I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I acted like a sore loser. So I did congratulate her, and with nothing but earnest compassion, she said, “You ran a good campaign, Norm.”
She was a class act. It’s a weird feeling to want to hug someone and punch them in the jaw at the same time. I did neither. Instead, I reminded myself that she was probably going to be assassinated someday—after all, that’s what happens to good leaders. And that was something I could live with.
Related, it took me another ten years after this fiasco before I could speak with any sort of confidence. Since then I’ve been the lead in college theatrical productions. I’ve done voice-over for any number of corporate videos and brand commercials. I’ve lectured in hundreds of college classrooms. I’ve been the voice of audiobooks and podcasts. I’ve pitched screenplays to Hollywood executives. I’ve performed weddings and given eulogies.
I doubt I’ll be assassinated anytime soon, but I will be performing at the Westside Story Club on March 23rd at the Kentwood Players Theater in Los Angeles. The night’s theme is “Can’t Unsee”—the moments, people, and visions that leave you changed forever (for better or worse!). Get your tickets here!
If you enjoyed this, consider reading some of my other stories:
Sex Edumacation: Another coming-of-age grade school story that goes off the rails.
The Boner Killer: A story about an unlikely power shift in a freshman writing course.
A Portrait of My Progeny as a Young Man: A story about my son making his own mistakes. That saying about apples and trees…
Manslaughter, Santa Claus, and a Hatchet: A story about holiday spirit and how it can go sideways on you.
And if you haven’t picked up my dark crime comedy novella Dig...
I’d like to confiscate “ only great men are assassinated.” Or whatever
your 6th grade imagination thought. Of course you were keee rect . Until one or was it 2 failed upon a lesser person. All history aside. Another fine Normism. Painstaking attempt at presidency. I never dreamt of higher office in grade school. I did however want to be prom Queen in my senior year hs . Nope. It’s ok. You should see the girl today. I’ll wear an invisible tiara. 😂😂😂😂
Loved it! Very brave to run a campaign on your own!