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Moore, you talk about your vast knowledge about all affairs. Where and when did you acquire this? Why you haven’t even got brains enough to get a haircut.

You are asking the citizens of Davison to vote you into the school board, actually insulting their intelligence by so doing.

My advice to you both is this? Have your good Mother take your diapers off; get a job or go to school, acquire some of this wisdom only acquired through experience and hard knocks and then come around and run for offices. Why you haven’t even started to live as yet.

Sharon—at least you are a beautiful young lady and you deserve a better fate than to be elected to a school board which is really a thankless job.

One who knows what he is talking about.

Yes, Sharon, you are a beautiful young lady, unlike that long-haired lug. As hate mail goes, this was one of the nicer ones I would ever receive.

On the morning of election day I got up, ate my Cocoa Krispies, and went to school. There were still five days left before graduation, and I had finals to take. The yearbooks were handed out and they contained the results of another election: the senior class had voted me “Class Comic.”

When school recessed at 1:30 p.m., I went and voted for me. I had focused my entire campaign on getting every eighteen- to twenty-five-year-old out to vote. There were nearly two hundred eligible voters just in my senior class. I had spent less than a hundred dollars on the campaign. We had spray-painted yard signs with stencils in my parents’ basement. There were no ads, only the one-page flyer I handed out going door to door.

There was a big turnout at the polls, and when they closed at 8:00 p.m., the counting of the paper ballots began. Less than two hours later, the results were announced.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the district’s assistant superintendent announced, “we have the results. In first place… Michael Moore.”

I was shocked. The group of hippie students who had gathered to watch the votes being counted went crazy with delight. A reporter from a local station asked me how I felt about beating seven “adults.”

“Well,” I said. “I’m an adult, too. And I feel great.”

“Well, congratulations,” the reporter said, “you’re the youngest person ever elected to public office in the State of Michigan.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes, it is. You beat the previous record by three years.”

Across the gymnasium where the votes had been counted, I could see the disappointed looks on the faces of the realtors, the insurance salesmen, the country club wives. The following day, a reporter from Detroit called to tell me I was the youngest elected official in the entire country (there was no one under the age of eighteen who held public office). Did I have a comment about that?

“Wow.”

What else was I gonna say? I was too deep in my own whirlwind about what had just happened to my life. Now I was going to be one of the seven people in charge of the school district, and the boss of both the principal and, most important, the assistant principal, Ryan. I was now in a position to take that fucking bat out of his hand.

The next morning, I went to school as I had for the previous twelve years. Walking down the hall on my way to Mr. Hardy’s creative writing class, I saw Assistant Principal Dennis Ryan coming toward me. Funny, there was nothing in his hand.

“Good day, Mr. Moore.”

Mr. Moore? That was a first. But hey, after all, how else would you address your new boss? Yet I was still a student under him. Weird. He kept walking and so did I.

It became a week of high fives and black power handshakes (I know, I know—this was Davison) among the students, many of them relishing what havoc I could wreak. I was given a number of suggestions from my constituents: make the jocks take real classes; put a cigarette machine in the cafeteria; institute the “four-hour school day”; drop the white milk and have only chocolate; find out what’s in the “Thursday Surprise” at lunch and kill the person