Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [92]
“Anybody want to join me?”
Half of them did.
The zero grade would lower my GPA to a 3.3 by the end of the year. I couldn’t have cared less.
This was not my first run-in with a teacher. The teacher who ran the student council class also flunked me. I never missed a day of that class. I made more motions and participated in more debates than perhaps anyone else in there. And that’s what bothered the teacher who was the student council advisor.
“How can you flunk me?” I confronted him.
“I’m flunking you because you create too much trouble in here,” he answered smugly. “I like a nice quiet, peaceful student council. You have made this year too difficult for me.”
All of this weighed on my mind on the walk home that day of my public paddling by the assistant principal. How would I exact my revenge? I had to look no further that night than the evening newspaper.
A copy of the local Flint Journal lined the box of trash I was cleaning out in our garage. I looked down and between stains of Miracle Whip and Faygo Redpop I noticed a story that reminded me about how the voting age in America had recently been lowered to eighteen. Hmmm, I thought, I’ll be eighteen in a few weeks.
I went back inside the house and, an hour later, I picked up the town weekly, the Davison Index. There, on the front page, taunting me, daring me, my future calling me: Hello, Mike. Read this! The headline?
SCHOOL BOARD ELECTION JUNE 12, TWO SEATS OPEN.
Huh. I’ll be able to vote for school board in a few months. Cool.
Wait.
Wait a minute! If I can vote… can I run? Can I run for a seat on the Board of Education? Would this not make me one of the bosses of the principal and vice principal? Yes? Yes? Whoa.
The next day, I called the county clerk’s office, the people in charge of elections.
“Um, yeah,” I stammered into the phone, not quite believing I was making this call. “Um, I was wondering that, now that eighteen-year-olds can vote, can we also run for office?”
“No. Not all offices. Which office would you like to run for?”
“School board.”
“Hang on, lemme check.” Within a minute he was back on the phone.
“Yes. The required age for school board candidates is eighteen.”
WOW! I couldn’t believe it. But then panic set in. How could I afford such a thing? They must charge you a lot of money to put your name on the ballot.
“How much does it cost to get on the ballot?” I asked the man.
“Cost? Nothing. It’s free.”
Free? This just kept getting better. Until he added the following:
“Of course you do have to get the required number of signatures on a petition in order to have your name placed on the ballot.”
Damn. I knew there was a catch. There were twenty thousand residents in the Davison School District, comprising the town of Davison and the townships of Davison and Richfield. Going all over the school district to collect God knows how many signatures was going to be next to impossible. I mean, I still had lots of algebra homework to do.
“How many names do I need on these petitions?” I asked with resignation.
“Twenty.”
“Twenty??”
“Twenty.”
“Did you say twenty?”
“Yes. Twenty. You need twenty signatures on a petition that you can pick up at the board of education offices.”
I could not believe that I only needed twenty names on a petition—and then, suddenly, I would be an official candidate! I mean, twenty names was nothing! I knew at least twenty stoners who would sign anything I put in front of them.
I thanked the man, and the next day I went to the superintendent’s office to pick up the petition. The secretary asked if I was picking up the petition for one of my parents.
“No,” I replied. And instead of adding “Would you like to see the welts on my butt or would you rather I call Child Protective Services?” I simply said, “It’s for me.”
She picked up the phone and made a call.
“Yes, I have a young man here who says he wants to run for school board. What is the age requirement these days? Uh-huh. I see. Thank you.”
She hung up the phone and bit her lip.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Seventeen,