Politics!!

Rea’s Fifth Grade class is participating in BizTown, a “mini-city“ which has civic leaders, businesses, criminals, you name it. Each student has a role in the “mini-city” and they will to to Nashville and spend the day learning about being grownups. Each student gets a checking account and a job. They spend the day in a cool building that is set up with pretend businesses with CEO’s, employees, paychecks and everything. Syd got to do this, I went her and it was a very neat experience.

BizTown 2008 Mayoral Elections were NOT a neat experience, they could give Hillary and Barack a run for their money!

Rea decided that she wanted to run for Mayor of BizTown. When I picked Rea up on Monday she insisted that we go straight to the grocery and buy brownies for her entire class. The Mayoral elections began at the class level and it seems that one boy, had brought brownies and Cokes for everyone in class that day. So, I’m thinking, WOW, that seems a little excessive for this, but…off we go to Kroger and since they had already had brownies, we bought two dozen cookies; I drew the line at the Cokes, and bought two dozen juice boxes. Next we stopped at Office Max for poster board so that her Campaign Committee (A & AC) could prepare posters for the next day. That night they also worked on a Power Point presentation. I thought they did a good job on the presentation, outlining her accomplishments at piano and soccer, then stating that Rea would try and be a Fair Leader.

But man, these kids knew how to up the ante! One little girl promised to vote for Rea if I promised to vote for her dad for State Senate!

The next afternoon when I picked Rea up, she was disappointed. She had placed second in the classroom Mayoral race behind PIZZA and COKE for EVERYONE plus his guitar along with a song he’s composed and sang. But, I must say she accepted this defeat gracefully.

Then Friday was the day for the runoff of the five Finalists. One of Rea’s BFF’s has made it to this point, so we were all rooting for her. And do you know that one parent actually hired a CLOWN?? Yes, you read that right. A CLOWN, complete with balloon animals, had come to school for this election to campaign for one child. Lord. Help. Us. (Rea was LESS gracious about this!)

Pizza Boy prevailed in the end. Guess clowns don’t have what it takes in the political arena.

I certainly hope that next year SANITY takes hold of someone at that school!