Running For Office, Them's Fightin' Words!

So, I decided to run for office, not because I thought I had a snowball's chance of winning, in fact, probably because I didn't. So I didn't try too hard to win--in fact, these are the only four things I did do:

• Announced it on Facebook  (ok, about a zillion times)
• Took a quarter page out  in the local paper for $197.27
• Announced it on FPF--our on-line hometown bulletin board
• Word of mouthed it w/ small flyers to those I knew

 Now, if it hadn't been for the smear campaign that Mrs. Geck, one of the local pre-school teachers (whose I Q is probably close to that OF a pre-schooler, and whose vocabulary consists of, "That's not nice" and  "It's only fair to share your toys" and "Let's go to the potty" and clapping and shouting "YES!" when someone drops a bum bum in the toilet and the like), I may have won by a larger margin.

OK, I was snarky and I did provoke her. But she started it.

First, she posted hate messages on the Forum. I reacted with information from my many years working with the poor, data that supported my argument. I emailed her directly asking some pointed questions like, "Why do you hate homeless people so much?"

Then, she posted a second scathing hate message about homeless people and my retort was, "Are you trying to reach small minded people?" And yes, it's true, I did indeed quote Will Shakespeare's Hamlet speech about her protesting too much. I also may have asked her why she had to keep it up, why, oh why did she have to rant and rave? Couldn't she let someone else post their own thoughts, for once?

Well,  Mrs. Geck didn't take a breath before she zapped off an email to about 150 people in her school's private email address book misquoting me. She wrote to owners of businesses, people who went to my church, people I had gone through 12 years of school with! Of course, what she didn't realize is I am related to half the town and she accidentally sent that wretched email to one of my many sisters! So, tit for tat, I wrote to her. After my second email to her, she not only told me not to write back, she wrote those same people telling them what I wrote--and misquoting me again, in the process.

However, in an attempt to make me look stupid; she made herself look insane. In an attempt to get MY goat, she let hers run away. She did hit below the belt when she went begging for people to vote for my opponent, the incumbant (whom she didn't even know, by the way) asking if "Yvette Mason is the kind of person we want representing us on the Select Board." 

Well, them's fighting words so I contacted an attorney who said now that it was public, it was slander (or was it lible)? If she had cost me the election, I wouldn't have been so forgiving. It's a national election year. And apparently she thought if Donald Trump can be racist, mysognistic and hateful, so could she! It's true that the night before the election I ended up in tears, crying to at least three friends how unfair it was and that she would be costing me the election. How I was Hester Prynne of Morristown and how nobody would ever speak to me again. I might as well start stitching the Scarlet Letter to my chest tonight. Blubber blubber.

My best friend, Jason, saw the rambling text I cried into my phone and quickly rang me up. "What is going on up there?" he hollered into the phone over the sound of a street siren. After listening for some time to my slobering nonsense, he finally said, "Ok, here's the thing, nobody likes their kids' preschool teacher anyway.They just put up with them until their kids get old enough to go to regular school and never speak to them again!" (That made me feel even worse, since I had spent 13 years as an afterschool teacher and I actually thought some of those parents LOVED ME! Booo hooo.)But by the end of the conversation I did realize ridiculous the whole situation was. How much worse could it really get?

Jason told me that even if I did lose, I had been brave. I had publicly stuck up for fringe, people without a voice. I had a made points that many people share, that I really passionately believed. And how many people DARE do that? And he ended his little encouraging speech with, "Evie, you are not Hester Prynne. You are Bernie Sanders!" and I could feel him smile all those miles away. I threatened to stay home the next day and not even vote. Jason convinced me that if I didn't vote, Mrs. Geck would win. So that was it. I had to suck it up and go out there the next day and vote. Plus, I would be sure to get at least one vote.

Fearing stares and lightening strikes, I avoided Town Meeting. But I did go into the town offices and went to cast my vote. Of course, it got worse when my name was misspelled on the ballot!  YEVETTE? WHAT THE F? And although it had gone from ridiculous to ridiculouser, I just smiled and thought, "Well, if I do win, does it even count? That's not even my name..." 

But won. I won by 72 votes. I beat out the encumbant--and nobody does that. 

Nobody.

When I told Jason, that it was only by a slim margin, he said, "What? Do you think when Hillary won....by 10 votes....something something....(I stopped listening so I could gloat)....she said, "Oh, I only won by... Hell no! She threw her arms up and said, "We just won Iowa!" (or was that Bernie?)

So, maybe Mrs. Geck's pre-school pontifications backfired. My ad featuring me (sort of) preserved in a Mason jar--might have been a smart move, after all. Listing my assets (that I am from here,  I was born and educated here, I pay taxes here and I'm here to stay) may have been enough. Maybe my being female helped, or my supporting Bernie or that my name was listed alphabetically and therefore came before the encumbant? Who knows? Maybe the words I posted in the Forum in the Six Word Contest aimed right at Mrs. Geck (Mary and Joseph were homeless too) got the Christian vote. Who really knows? I do know that the 24 hour roller-coaster ride was one of the best and worst of my life.

And Mrs. Geck? She's still out there--lurking in the shadows, typing her hate mail late into the night. Instead of being the super mom who reads bedtime stories and tucks her kids into bed, she is still obsessing like Bilbo Baggins about her Precious, her Precious...

I told one of my seven sisters that if Mrs. Geck had said I was a slob and always had dirty dishes in my sink or rarely took my recycled wine bottles to Stowe Recycling Center, or even had unclean thoughts or whatever, I'd say, "OK! OK! She's got me there!" But, "She's mean to me!"? and "Do we want this kind of person in office?" Making her the victim? Me the bully?

I.  Don't. Think. So.

She's the one who twisted my words. She's the one who tried to whip this town up into a lather portraying me as the Melville heroine of Morristown.

It's true that if I hadn't won the election, I would have sued the hippie skirt off her. Taken the yarn and knitting needles out of her clutches. But 53% of the vote is a win. And Mrs. Geck or no Mrs. Geck, I am not Hester Prynne. I am Bernie Sanders. I tell it like it is. I take names. I call people out. I get the votes. And I'm smart enough to privately email people to let them think twice about their public comments. I never once said a bad word about the incumbant.  I never even said a bad word about Mrs. Geck.

I? Thanked everyone for their votes. Humbly and sincerely. I didn't sue her (yet) nor did I wish ill will. I didn't point out the lunacy of her campaign to bersmirch me. I turned the other cheek. I took the high road. 

There is a lot less traffic up here.

rewritten April 5, 2016 

Soft Soaping a Pig

SOFT SOAPING A PIG--named Gronk

There's an expression about soft-soaping someone and I used to hear it in my childhood, "Oh, he's just soft-soaping you," someone would say, mostly my father.

I think it was like "greasing the pig"-where, during county fairs back in the day (and maybe even now-a-days) in some parts of America, there are pig catching contests. A pig and a human being run around in a pen and the pig squeals and the human grunts and groans and, because the pig is "greased up" for this contest,when the person chasing it around does get his hands on that pig, he usually loses grip and the pig slips away and runs around some more in the muck with on-lookers placing cash bets, mostly ON the pig...

I grew up with horses, ducks, chickens, goats and once we may or may not have had a cow. I can clearly remember having a pig when I was in middle school. His name was Gronk because that was the sound he emmitted when he called out. We fed Gronk grain and table scraps, stuff we normally composted and Gronk seemed to smile and wave his curly tail every time he saw one of my sisters or Dad coming over the bank toward his pen with the sap bucket of food.

Gronk lived there all year and maybe two but I'm not sure and then one day it came--late fall. Lawrence Lechance meandered over from next door with a knife the size of a machete and called out to my Dad. Then the two of them went over the bank and came up the gravel road with Gronk between them with a rope around his neck. They passed the mail box and turned into the driveway and disappeared into the wood shed where, presumably Lawrence slit old Gronk's throat.  

I was 14 at the time and I had vowed vegetarianism when I was 12. Naturally I was horrified that my family would raise and then murder an innocent animal, one I had come to tell my secrets to. Dad of course, reminded me what he had said from the very beginning, "Do not make friends with that pig. He's going to be pork chops and ham and bacon come fall." And for effect, Dad would lick his lips and send me running outside. No soft-soaping there.

I was certain that Gronk knew what they were going to do to him that fated day. That day my eyes opened and filled with tears. The day I ran up the road and into the field and cried and cried for my pig friend, Gronk.