Rosie Swanson: Fourth-Grade Geek for President Read Free Page A

Rosebud.
    Two desks behind Summer Lynne Jones was this boy I went to kindergarten with. His name is Alan Allen. I’d like to make fun of it, but I have an uncle named Harry Harry. And besides, when you’re the best soccer player in the fourth grade, and you look almost exactly like Michael Jordan, your name could be Piggly Wiggly and no one would care. They’d just pat you on the back, say “Good game, Piggly,” and that would be that.
    A girl named Louise the Disease was sitting next to the window. That’s not her real name, but she always has a cold, so that’s what everyone calls her. She deliberately sneezed on me in assembly last year. I reported her to the nurse, but no action was taken.
    Roxanne Handleman was right behind Louise the Disease. I used to know Roxanne, but I don’t anymore. One time when we were in kindergarten, she came over to my house to play. She wore a nurse’s outfit and made me call her Florence. It was the longest afternoon of my life.
    Next to Roxanne was this girl named Karla something, who I didn’t know much about. Then there were three kids from Mrs. Munson’s class. I didn’t know them, either, but they were acting really cool—like they were the “in crowd,” or something—so I decided not to like them.
    Mr. Jolly grabbed a piece of chalk and walked over to the board. “Okay, let’s get started. I want to welcome everyone to our meeting this afternoon and tell you how glad Mrs. Munson and I are that so many of you have decided to run for class office.”
    He took his chalk and wrote the words “President,” “Vice President,” “Secretary,” and “Treasurer.” Underneath each title he left room for names.
    “The first thing we need to do is find out which office each of you wants to run for,” he said.“Let’s begin with president, okay? How many of you came here today to run for president of the fourth grade? Let’s see your hands.”
    My heart started to pound again. I closed my eyes and secretly prayed that I would be the only one. When I opened them, Nic and Vic Timmerman were waving their hands all over the place.
    Mr. Jolly looked puzzled. “Wait a second. You mean you
both
want to run for president? Do you really think that’s a good idea, guys? For two brothers to run
against
each other?”
    The Timmerman twins shook their heads. “We don’t want to run
against
each other, Mr. Jolly,” said Vic. “We want to run
together.
As a team. You know, the fourth grade will get two presidents—”
    “—for the price of one,” finished Nic.
    Mrs. Munson didn’t waste a second. “Oh no. No way,” she said flatly. “Absolutely not, gentlemen.”
    Nic and Vic looked shocked.
    “But why not?” asked Vic.
    “Yeah, how come?” asked Nic. “It’d be perfect. We could do twice as much work as onepresident. And if one of us got sick, the other one could—”
    “—take his place,” finished Vic. “It’d be—”
    “—perfect,” said Nic.
    Mrs. Munson crossed her arms. “I’m sorry, boys, but class president is not tag-team wrestling. We’re trying to teach you something about government. And in our government, there’s only one president. You two think it over, and we’ll get back to you in a few minutes.”
    The Timmermans put their heads down on their desks.
    Mrs. Munson moved along. “Okay, who else wants to run for president?”
    I took a deep breath and started to raise my hand. That’s when Alan Allen’s arm shot into the air.
    “Me! I do,” he said.
    Then Summer Lynne Jones raised her hand, too. She fluttered her fingers and waved to get Mr. Jolly’s attention.
    My insides went limp. Seriously. It was like somebody let all my air out. All this time, I had just been kidding myself about being able to winan election. Why would anyone vote for regular, average
me
, when they could vote for cute and popular
them?
    Mr. Jolly searched the room for more volunteers. I sat on my hands and slumped down in my seat.
    Finally, he moved on.