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I never want to bring politics into these newsletters, but I feel the need to discuss my own brief but tumultuous brush with politics in this tell-all tale.Believe it or not, I actually was Vice President of my middle school student government when I was in the 7th grade. Ever since watching the towers fall in 3rd grade, I knew I had to run for office as soon as I could. It was a long, hard-fought campaign, but at the end of the day, it couldn’t have gone smoother for me. I’d operated like a politician since Pre-K, attempting to befriend all cliques that I could. This turned out to be very beneficial in my first run for office. For many cans of Monster and Slim Jims, I was able to bribe the bullies into intimidating the opposition. It went flawlessly, with everyone dropping out before election day, leaving just my name at the polls. In my defense, this was only to get rid of my stubborn peers who wouldn’t stop with their personal attack ads. Every day, dozens of papers with my face hung on the hallway bulletin boards that said “Jacob is pale,” or “Jacob likes Briana.” And so what if I did?

The policies I ran on were quite popular, with the abolition of four organizations being my main campaign promise:

     1. The PTA – “Let’s get parents out of education.”

     2. The History Department – “Let’s look forward, not backward.”

     3. The National Honor Society – “Let’s knock the elites down a peg.”

     4. The Alumni Association – “Once you’re done, you’re done.”

I proposed Paid Family Leave, a program in which we students pay our families to leave, so we can party at their houses in peace. I also proposed not only Free School Lunches, but Free School Desserts and Free School Dinners. This was unpopular with cafeteria staff. I also vowed to never take money from corporations.

What’s weird about student governments is that they don’t run on the same campaign, it’s all individual students running for different positions. So me running as Vice President was completely independent of whoever was running for President. “Why not run for President?” you may ask. It’s sort of the story of my life – I’d rather not be the face of things, preferring to be an influence behind the scenes. Plus, “Vice President” sounded cooler to me at the time.

So I get elected and roll up my sleeves to clean up the mess of the last administration. “Time for a shake-up!” I said in the school bathroom mirror. Within ten minutes of our first weekly meeting in Mrs. B’s, I felt for the first time the speed of bureaucracy and procedure moving like blackstrap molasses, bogging down progress. How could I change the 7th grade at this rate?

Well, in a cruel twist of fate, our 7th grade president was assassinated. Unknown sniper on a distant grassy knoll. Georgina had fallen. 

I had to take over the presidency, and what a pain in the ass that was. There were all kinds of conspiracies. She did have some very polarizing stances, like removing peanut butter products from the middle school bake sale. This was her most adamant stance, being allergic to the food herself. A lot of people wanted her head for that one, the parents included! Protests ran amok. It could have been anyone on that grassy knoll. I did receive a shipment of peanut butter with a letter from Skippy® congratulating me on the new position a few days later, which was nice. I quickly vetoed the Peanut Butter Ban Bill, and doubled down on nut butters at middle school bake sales. 

 As the school year was coming to an end, along with my first term, Skippy®, Jif®, and Smuckers®, called a meeting with my administration, which was a kleptocracy at this point, and announced they had formed a Super PAC called The People’s Peanuts that would fund my re-election. I declined, deciding to resign from public life and shift my focus to playing Xbox. I thought I had the free will to do that. Little did I know that the dark pact with the devil named Skippy® was sealed. For almost the past 20 years I have been bound to do peanut butter’s bidding. Sometimes when I’m ordering for the frozen department, an unshakable force comes over me, and I find myself ordering several cases of frozen peanut butter-covered banana slices that we don’t need. The worst part is that I love peanut butter. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that we cling to that which brings us suffering. God help us all. Free us from the shackles of Smuckers and government bureaucracy.