My Awkward Wit and George H.W. Bush is My B.F.F.

Going back to school was a huge deal to me.  In my young adult years, I never took school seriously, and my GPA was a pitiful because of it.  I decided I needed a small break, and that small break turned into ten years.  After a decade of retail, getting married, having a baby, and a dream to one day own my very own movie theater, I enrolled back in school.

Preparing for my first semester back after such a long gap was exciting!  In my early college days, I admired the "older students" that I shared a class with.  They were there because they wanted to be there.  They took their classes seriously, got good grades, and I respected them.  They were there for a purpose, and now I was there for a purpose.  And maybe, just maybe, being in a classroom with some kids over ten years younger than me would be inspiring!

 I'll inspire the world!

First day of class, I offended one of my classmates.  While I was finally one of the "older students", he was an "older older student"; therefore, in my mind, he was supposed to receive extra respect.  In this particular class, we had to go around and introduce ourselves and ask each other a question from a list made up by our instructor.  If my short conversation with him was turned into a theater production made up of characters called "Me" and "Him", the script would have looked a little like this:

Me: Um, if you could be anyone for a day, who would it be?

Him: Ronald Reagan.

Me: (Laughing slightly) I bet you wouldn't want to be him now!

Him: (Straight faced and looking slightly annoyed) Why would you say that?

Me: (Now embarrassed and wishing I could walk away) Well, because he's dead.

Him: (Silent at first, for what felt like a long time, but probably only for a couple seconds) Yeah, but he did a lot of amazing things in his lifetime.

Yes, the play would have been just as bad as the awkward setting I was placed in real life.  I walked away wishing I could prove to him that I was more than a bad one-liner.  I knew a lot about Ronald Reagan!  He was an actor before he was in politics!  He did The Dark, Dark Hours  with James Dean!

Perhaps this short film wouldn't have given me much credit.

Berlin Wall, Cold War, assassination attempt driven by Twinkies... I'm a human Wikipedia!  The most important bit of information, the one I should have shared, was the fact that I consider myself to be a minor acquaintance of Ronald Reagan's Vice-President.

When I was eight years old, right after the inauguration of George H.W. Bush (former Vice-President to Reagan), I wrote a letter to our new president.  I was a kid and thought scary movies were evil.

Dear Mr. President,

Congratulations on being our president.  I know you will listen to me.  Scary movies are against God.  They give kids nightmares and are bad for everyone.  Can you make scary movies illegal?  

Sincerely,
Brooke  

I didn't know his address, so I trusted that simply writing "The White House" on the envelope would be enough for it to be sent to Washington D.C. and not the tarnished old white house down the block.


A few months went by and I forgot all about The Cause I was so passionate about.  I had more important distractions, anyway.  In elementary school, every holiday was celebrated with a party.  One particular day, my third grade class was celebrating Cinco De Mayo.  We made tacos.


*Side note: Is it weird that we cooked ground beef in class?  This was the 80's.  I'm not sure if the USDA would approve of this nowadays.  I'll find out in a few years when Shisha enters school.  I don't know if I would approve of other children and strange parents stirring up my child's meat.  For me, however, as an eight year old, it was a perfectly unquestionable scenario BECAUSE of the fact that it was the 80's.  It was a good time to be making beef!  

So there I was, mouth full of taco, when we all noticed a beautiful young woman entered our classroom.  It was Super Cool Aunt Sandra, and all the boys in my class dropped their tacos and rice and they stared at her glowing beauty. (Super Cool Aunt Sandra, or SCAS, will be a "character" of stories in the future, including why she was always so "super cool"). I stared, too, wondering what made her grace the presence of the third grade class of Laneview Elementary School.  Shouldn't SCAS be off doing something...cool?  She was  in her 20's, you know.

*Side note:  In the 80's, could anyone just enter a school classroom?  If it wasn't SCAS it could have been anyone.  Scary? 

SCAS approached me with a white sealed envelope.  "Brooke, I came here to give this to you myself." she told me.  "The is a letter from The White House!"

"The White House?" Michael K., my third grade crush, screamed.

"The White House!" the other children shouted!

The rest was a blur of excitement and praise as my classmates kept taking the letter out of my hands before I could open it.  Mr. Garcia, my teacher, finally grabbed it and gave it back to me, asking me to read it aloud, but not before he smiled sweetly at SCAS and asked her if she wanted some tacos.  She politely declined.  She was probably smart to do that.

As I opened the letter, SCAS walked out of the classroom with a proud look on her face.  I made a mental note to myself that I would be  her someday.

The letter contained a photo of George H.W. Bush leaning against a wooden fence with a horse in the background.  

   This is obviously not the actual photo.   I found the picture on a button

while surfing the web for images of what the photo looked like.

 Here you go.

Unfortunately, I have moved numerous times since Cinco De Mayo, 1989.  I no longer have the letter to quote verbatim.  I can summarize, telling you that he talked about the importance of education and how much he cares about our Nation's young people.  He did not address my idea to ban scary movies, nor, as you all could figure out, did anything get done about it.  I'd like to think that he did bring it up during a meeting, but perhaps I should have had a petition with 5,000 signatures or something like that.  It probably is a good thing nothing came out of my Cause.  My husband and grandmother would probably never forgive me if I was The Face of the ban on movies like Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Dance of the Dead.


The aftermath was the greatest thing that could have happened to me.  I was the star of my class!  It was only for a day, but what an amazing day!  I was picked first to be on the kickball team.  I was given an extra taco!  Michael K. gave me a tennis ball and told me to give it to "my friend, The President."  


If I called George H.W. Bush up directly, he would have no idea who I was, and probably wouldn't let me sleep on his and Barbara's couch if I showed up at his door.  No matter, I still consider myself an acquaintance and I choose to believe he has my letter in a scrapbook somewhere.