The blathering idiot was in a fourth grade class. Why he was in a fourth grade class, he wasn’t sure, except that Lydia had told him they were studying about the civic process of getting elected to office and that she knew the teacher and had told the teacher she was working with a candidate for the highest office in the land, and the teacher asked if the candidate might be available to speak to her class, and Lydia had said sure, and so here he was.
They were standing in the school, a small old house actually that had been converted to a full time school many years ago.
The blathering idiot looked up the stairway leading to the second floor. The fourth grade was immediately to his right at the top of the stairs. He felt butterflies and breakfast churning in his stomach. He wasn’t ready for this. He was sure of it. And they were late. The teacher would rap his knuckles for being late now just like she did when he was in the fourth grade. It didn’t matter that it was a different school in a different city with a different teacher. There was a quantum connection among all fourth grade teachers and they universally want to rap your knuckles for being late to class, no matter the excuse. No excuse was ever good enough to overcome the quantum connection.
Climbing the stairway back to fourth grade. “I don’t want to do this,” he said.
“I don’t want to do this,” he said.
Wasn’t there a show about being smarter than a fifth grader? Maybe this was a prelude to talking to fifth graders.
“Think of it as practice for when you get on the road and are campaigning.”
Fifth graders for sure, he thought.
“She’ll wrap my knuckles,” he said.
“What?” Lydia asked.
He looked at her. He couldn’t disguise the fear. “We’re late and she wants to wrap my knuckles!”
The first grade teacher leaned out of the door to her room and pointed a ruler at them. “Quiet, please.”
She looked younger than he remembered his first grade teacher looking. Prettier, too. His stomach calmed slightly. Then he noticed the ruler and his stomach started fluttering again.
“Wait here,” Lydia said.
Before he could say anything, she was up the stairs and knocking on the fourth grade teacher’s door. Then she disappeared inside the room and the blathering idiot’s stomach started fluttering again.
It was probably only a few minutes, but to the blathering idiot it felt like a few hours. Then the door to the fourth grade classroom opened, Lydia poked her head out, and she waved the blathering idiot upstairs.
Slowly he trudged up the stairs. It felt like school all over again.
When he reached the top, the fourth grade teacher opened the door and invited him in. She smiled and her face looked more kind than stern. The blathering idiot looked at her hand. She was not holding a ruler.
He shrugged and trudged into the room.
Lydia introduced him as a candidate running for the highest office in the land and the fourth graders looked at him oddly.
“For real?” one boy with red hair asked.
“For real,” Lydia said.
“Now, Jeffry,” the teacher said, “Remember to raise your hand first and wait to be called on before asking a question.”
The blathering idiot glanced over at her. He still saw no ruler. But he had a sudden urge for his sock monkey, the one he had when he was five and kept with him up to the fourth grade, where a couple of the boys tugged it away from him and tore it apart.
Every kid in the classroom raised a hand.
The teacher pointed at a little girl in the back of the room. She looked small for a fourth grader and she wore very large glasses.
“Yes, Abigail, you can ask your question.”
Abigail stood up beside her desk, but didn’t look any taller than when she was sitting in it. In fact, she looked a little shorter.
The blathering idiot leaned slightly toward as if he anticipated her voice to be as small as she was.
Instead, the room filled with a large, loud, high-pitched squeal as she asked her question: “And why are you running for this office, anyway?”
He looked over at Lydia and he felt his face getting hot. Would a small fourth grader with big glasses understand running for the highest office in the land to make your on again, off again girl friend jealous, prove her wrong that you would never amount to anything? Would a fourth grader understand that he was running because he now wanted to spend more time with Lydia, though she had never indicated more than a professional interest in him? Would a school kid understand that within him as probably within many grown men, there is a desire to better at something than anybody else, to prove he was unique, one-of-a-kind, just like his parents had always told him he was growing up.
He remembered his own sock monkey, torn apart in the fourth grade, where the teacher rapped his knuckles for being late.
He stared at the exaggerated eyes of the little girl and he remembered what the consultant had told him: keep his answers brief and keep his answers on the level of the person asking the question.
So, instead of trying to explain all his true jumble of thoughts and feelings, he said, “Because I thought it would be fun to be elected to the highest office in the land. Maybe some day you’ll want to, too.”
The little girl shook her head so vigorously, her shoulders and torso moved. “No. I want to be a veterinarian. I think that would be more fun. Don’t you?”
The blathering idiot felt his knuckles sting as if they had just been smacked by a ruler. He was sure he wasn’t ready for fifth grade … and he wanted his sock monkey.
