Lydia walked up to the blathering idiot. Her face looked as if had had somebody tugging on it, stretching it out and down.
Everybody else filed out of the small conference room as well. Nobody looked like he or she had had a good time.
Lydia managed a wan smile. There and gone. More a hope of a smile than a real one.
If politics is like this, the blathering idiot thought, why do people go into it?
“We have decided on a Pro-Accordion Party mascot.” She heaved a sigh as if it were the heaviest thing she would ever carry. “We have decided on the armadillo.”
“Armadillo?” the blathering idiot asked.
“Armadillo? Oooh!” Xenia held her nose.
The Pro-Accordion Party selects the armadillo for its mascot, in part because it can collapse into a small space, like an accordion.
Lydia glared at Xenia for a moment, then turned back to the blathering idiot.
“Look at it this way,” she said, “the armadillo has protection like the turtle you were fond of, but can also collapse itself down into a smaller space—”
“Like an accordion,” the blathering idiot said.
“Exactly,” Lydia said.
“Armadillo?” Xenia turned, found a seat, and sat down.
Lydia looked at Xenia. “We did a quick focus group and found there were too many people who had negative connotations associated with a turtle, even one in a red, white, and blue hat. When we asked those same people about armadillos, most had no direct experience with an armadillo and had largely neutral thoughts about the creature. A few even confused with an ant eater. That gives us a chance to clearly define it and why it is our mascot.”
“And how do you intend to define the PAP mascot?” the blathering idiot asked.
“We’re working on that,” Lydia said.
“Who did you focus group?” Xenia asked. “My mom did that for a while.”
“We called up ten people at random from the phone book.”
“Ten people?” The blathering idiot asked.
“Only ten?” Xenia asked.
“They were at random. That was all we had time and money for. We only have a small budget for such things. A big part of the discussion in there was over spending that money on this. Most didn’t want to spend any money on this until I reminded if we didn’t we’d stuck with the turtle.”
Stuck with the turtle. That didn’t set well with the blathering idiot, but before he could say anything, Xenia asked a question.
“So you are picking your mascot because ten random people said so?”
“That’s eight more than you two,” Lydia said.
The blathering idiot couldn’t argue with that. Still, an armadillo?
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