The Mission San Gabriel Arc\u00e1ngel, founded in 1771, was visible from my high school.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was elected student body president at my high school. \u00a0Here\u2019s a note about that:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I had never, I think, held (or run for) an office in student government. \u00a0(My memory is actually a bit fuzzy on this point: \u00a0It\u2019s possible that I once served on a class council. \u00a0I really don\u2019t remember.)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But there was somebody \u2014 let\u2019s call him SB (for \u201csomebody,\u201d not his initials) \u2014 who had been class president at least once and possibly twice, and who was widely expected to run for and to win the presidency of the overall student body.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
(By the way, I share William Strunk\u2019s dislike for the term student body<\/em>, which he regarded as rather \u201ccadaverous.\u201d \u00a0Unfortunately, though, his suggested replacement, studentry<\/em> \u2014 as in \u201cpresident of the studentry\u201d \u2014 has never caught on. \u00a0Not even close.)<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Curiously, though, I had myself occasionally thought about running for student body president and, when the time came, I did.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I won. \u00a0Rather handily, if I\u2019m not mistaken. \u00a0And that yielded\u00a0a pretty good feeling.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The votes were counted in the evening, after dark, and I remember walking along\u00a0one of the campus hallways after hearing the news, heading toward my car with considerable satisfaction. \u00a0Then I turned a corner. \u00a0And there, to my uncomfortable surprise, I saw SB sitting on a bench with his head in his hands, sobbing.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I quickly withdrew, embarrassed, and I don\u2019t think that he ever knew that I had been\u00a0there.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But I\u2019ve never forgotten the image. \u00a0It\u2019s stayed with me for nearly half a century.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
SB\u00a0had badly, desperately, wanted to be student body president. \u00a0Moreover, he had assumed, like everybody else on campus, that he would<\/em> be. \u00a0It wasn\u2019t an unreasonable assumption.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
By contrast, I hadn\u2019t cared all that much. \u00a0It was ego-gratifying to be elected, and I\u2019m sure that being able to put \u201cstudent body president\u201d down on the forms didn\u2019t hurt my college applications. \u00a0But I wouldn\u2019t have been devastated, I certainly wouldn\u2019t have cried, had I lost.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Truth be told, to some degree at least the sight of him crying ruined my evening. \u00a0It blunted my pleasure in my own victory to know that it had caused pain to someone \u2014 and, particularly, to someone whom I actually rather liked. \u00a0He wasn\u2019t a bad guy.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I wondered if winning had been worth it. \u00a0I actually thought that maybe I should simply resign and had the office over to him as the runner-up.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I learned something that night about the ambiguity of life. \u00a0Perhaps I grew up just a bit.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
For some reason, that incident crossed my mind just now. \u00a0I don\u2019t think about it, or about having been student president, more than about once every five or ten years. \u00a0For twenty seconds at a time. \u00a0It seems like another person altogether.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I hope SB is doing well. \u00a0I lost touch with him immediately upon graduation. \u00a0I saw something about him a few years after that \u2014 I think that he had married his remarkably cute high school sweetheart \u2014 but that\u2019s the last that I\u2019ve ever heard.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 I was elected student body president at my high school. \u00a0Here\u2019s a note about that: \u00a0 I had never, I think, held (or run for) an office in student government. \u00a0(My memory is actually a bit fuzzy on this point: \u00a0It\u2019s possible that I once served on a class council. \u00a0I really don\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"The](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/08\/800px-Mission_San_Gabriel_4-15-05_6611.jpg\")
<\/a>