Vote!

The first debate was last night, so ladies and gentlemen it is officially election season! For the next month, everyone and their mother will be reminding you to vote. I'm gonna take it a step further and encourage you to look up who else is running BEFORE you get to the polls. Half the time you get so caught up in the main event that you don't pay attention to the lightweight fights before the fight. Okay, let's be real...the MAJORITY of the time you don't even know you're supposed to vote for those other positions until you get in front and someone hands you a flyer.

The first time I ever voted was in the 2000 Presidential Election. I was so excited to be grown that I walked in the booth like I was hot shit. "Bush or Gore, Bush or Gore?" For P.C.'s sake (and to help get a job one day in the future) let's just pretend I was torn between the two. I got in that little booth and was taken aback, "Hold up, you can vote for the NC Commissioner of Insurance? There's a Secretary of State...for the state?" I did what I later learned that a lot of people do in that situation...."Bartholomew Winchester III or Leroy Johnson? Leroy sounds Black. Imma go with him. Becky Ryan or Lakeisha Williams? Keisha sounds ghetto. I don't trust her to be Treasurer. I think I did see a poster for a guy named Terrence. He looked crooked in those pictures, so Imma vote for the Cedric." So with all that said...do your homework ahead of time.

I won't lie and say that this election doesn't slightly depress me. You see, I'm getting closer to 35, the minimum age to be President. I think it's safe to say that judging by my credit history and some of the things I can't possibly write about on this blog and still hope to get a job one day, I don't think I'm gonna grow up to be President after all. I feel so bad letting down all those people from high school who voted me "Most Likely to be President." I know you guys had your little seventeen year old hearts set on it. A handful of people still refer to me as Mr President on Facebook. They'll probably take it the hardest. Lotta suicide risks floating around now. Sigh.

Confidence is a hell of a thing, but so is chance. I was nervous as hell to go to high school. A nerd of the highest order, I just knew I was gonna end up at one of DC's many versions of East Side High (Lean on Me) where I'd promptly have to pull a Sophia from The Color Purple ("All my life I had to fight!). As fate would have it, I ended up at the nerd school. It was like the X-Men school but for nerds. In this place I was class president 11th and 12th grade as well as school president 12th grade as well.

The funny thing is that I never planned to do any of that. They dragged us all to the cafeteria in 11th grade and told us we were gonna hold elections, so line up if you want to give a speech. I wanted something to put on my college application, so I got up for treasurer. Fifty people ran for that ahead of me so I changed it to secretary. Another fifty people. By the time I got to the front the only thing left was VP and President. There was a girl that I liked running for VP and she really wanted it, so I figured I'd run for President just for kicks. Plus I was this close to hooking up with another girl who happened to be in the cafeteria and you know nerd girls love a man in power.

I jotted down some points on a paper towel that I thought were BS in someone else's speech. I got up and said that I was the unlikely candidate because I had a horrible GPA and I lived in the office because I kept cursing teachers out. "That's what makes me the right choice! Do you want someone who's afraid to speak their mind because it'll show up on their report card or do you want a guy with a proven track record for speaking up? You know my track record. I have nothing to lose, so I'm willing to fight for you. And by the way, all that stuff the other people said was BS. This is class president not school superintendent. You can't change the lunches or shorten the school day."

I won by over 70 percent...and I got the girl! (Hell yeah!) The next year I was ready to give a similar speech for school president, but I ran unopposed. The moral of the story...Don't forget to vote...but pick someone not in it for the money, fame or women. Good luck with that.