flashdance flashback story: sitting on the fence and falling off

so ronald reagan is gone. it makes me feel old b/c he was president during much of my childhood: a time of feathered bangs, upturned collars, sunglasses at night, striped legwarmers, and lest i forget, sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off a la irene cara. i listened to duran duran. when we studied current events at school and our homework was to bring a clipped newspaper article, i, like everyone else, brought in the one about michael jackson's hair catching on fire during his pepsi commercial. what can i say? i grew up during the 80's. and so it was with ronald reagan's defeat of jimmy carter that i first became aware--as elementary as my understanding was--of politics. so let me tell you a story:

i am not republican. but once upon a time, i sat on the fence. it was november 1980. my 1st grade teacher, mrs. martin, set up a mock voting booth to help teach our six-year-old minds about presidential elections. on a table inside was a basket of graham crackers on the right, saltines on the left. she instructed us to go in one by one, and take a graham cracker if we were voting for ronald reagan and a saltine if we were voting for jimmy carter. (she later determined the winner by tallying up the crackers we chose). oh, how i agonized over my decision. then i resolved to pick a saltine (maybe b/c i thought my parents supported carter?).

and then it happened: peer pressure. my best friend, rachel anderson, whispered that she chose a graham cracker in support of ronald reagan. i just couldn't say no (or was it that i couldn't just say no?). what would i do? when my turn to vote came, i strutted in, grabbed a graham AND a saltine, and smugly smirked to myself, thinking i'd outsmarted the first grade electoral system.

but my triumphant fencerider feeling was short lived b/c i got busted as i exited the voting booth. my outfit had no pockets. my small hands couldn't hide the extra cracker i had picked. what to do? when mrs. martin spotted the extra cracker i was forced to make a split-second choice and give up the cracker i didn't want. in the end, the irresistible honeyed sweetness of the graham cracker won out. i had fallen off of the fence and become a young republican! long story short: in the end, my republicanism was just as much a one-shot deal as my legwarmers and my upturned collars. (but seriously, politics aside, let's let ronald reagan r.i.p.). alzheimers is a very, very sad ending.