Watch Out for the Fine Print

Good advice, but in my case there was no fine print. Samantha brought home a form for me to sign last week that would let her apply to be in her elementary school counsel next year. There wasn’t much information on the form, something about voting towards the end of the year and a place to put my signature in consent. Sounded like a good cause so we copied the form and filled out out for Jacob too. An insight into how I think, I figured If I had to pick Samantha up late after school on meeting days, they both might as well stay to save me a trip.

The kids came home Tuesday from school and said people were putting posters up. I remember words on that paper about campaigning, but I guess I disregarded it since we are only in elementary school. Yesterday I called the school to get a little more information. The counselor at the school didn’t really give me much to go on, except that we could put up posters and fliers. There weren’t really any rules except for no passing out stuff like candy (there goes Samantha’s slogan “If you like candy-vote for Sammi).When I asked when this election was, she just said sometime next week, no date was even set.

Since yesterday was my brother’s birthday we headed down there for dinner. On the way I picked up some posters, and glitter glue (Samantha’s request) and started our brain storming. Craig and Cherise helped with the brain storming but I left their house at the kid’s bedtime and I still had empty poster boards. Samantha and Jacob decided on slogans in the car and we got to work as soon as we got home. Matthew let me know this morning that I made him sleep in his clothes because I didn't help him get to bed.

Long story short the kids were still up at 11:00 pm. I didn’t want to just do the posters for them, and I guess since we had such late hours over the weekend camping, I figured we would let it slide. We pasted away late, and then even this morning Samantha was putting glitter on her two smaller posters.

I hope this ends up to be a good experience for them win or loose. There is one position for Jacob’s grade next year, and only 3 positions for Samantha’s grade. Who knows how many kids are running, but I know that there are 2 from Jacob’s class- multiply that by 8 classes and probably there are at least 16 for that one position. I am not even going to guess how many are running against Samantha.

I think this might be the first year they have had the students run for the counsel, and it looks like it is going to be a disaster. Why are they having popularity contests in elementary school? And better yet why are my kids caught up in it?

All this work just because I signed a paper that had about 5 lines of vague information.