Make America Great Again

It won't always be like this....
Two quasi-political posts in a row. I swear, the last blog post was a week in the making. It went through a couple of revisions and I had to do some studying and self thought to get that bad boy to "print". Not usually my style to talk politics and religion all the time. Totally not my agenda.

But I have to share.

The next two little stories happened AFTER I clicked submit on Carter's "Crisis of Confidence".
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The 7th grade girls volleyball team that Emma plays on has been practicing together since before school even started. Yesterday, they finally got to take the court in their first interscholastic competition. We traveled to play on the home court of the Jaguars of Hinckley-Finlayson at the Community Center. When the final point was scored, our Lady Tigers were victorious by a 4-1 margin. But that's not what I was most proud of.

Later in the evening while replaying the day's events with our children, Emma was giving us a game re-cap from her perspective. You could feel her sense of pride in the body of work that she and her teammates where finally able to put on display. And when it came time to discuss the "special needs" girl on her team, Emma was even more enthusiastic.

"Even Amanda played great. She was where she was supposed to be. She served really well. Even when something didn't go so well for her and she started to get mad and you could see one of her fits coming on, she would look to us and all we had to do was give her two thumbs up and smile at her. Tell her she was doing fine and she smiled back."

Game #1 and the girls already have learned the importance of each and every teammate.

On to the Bear.

Being in 4th grade comes with great opportunity.

More homework but more playground freedoms. Tougher subjects but more extracurricular possibilities. One of those extracurriculars is Student Council. Yesterday we held our class election to determine our two representatives for the Jacobson Elementary Student Council. Mr. Logan is our male representative while his buddy, Autumn, is the female rep.

Not that I am looking forward to a long life of being the father of a politician, I am proud that he was elected democratically by his peers. No hanging chads. No pumping the ballot. No campaign strategy. Logan and Autumn were picked because of who they are and the description that I gave to the class of a good choice prior to the vote.

"A good student council representative is a: *Good Listener, *Good Student, *Good Friend, *Hard Worker, *Responsible, Respectful and Energetic, etc. etc..."
You know the drill.

After school was dismissed and his classmates were off to the bus, I put my arm around my long haired little compadre and told him that I was proud of him for being chosen by his classmates. Being Dad and Teacher, I had no influence on the election results but I did count the ballots. On my honor, the results were straight and true. What I wanted to know though was why he didn't vote himself.

"Because Dad. I had a pretty good idea I was going to win and I didn't want my buddy, Vinnie,
 to feel bad. So I made sure he had a couple of votes."

Don't worry Mr. Trump. Your campaign slogan of "Make America Great Again" doesn't start on a TV commercial or an ugly white hat. It doesn't start in Washington D.C. or on the desk of any politician. Like President Carter said 37 years ago...it starts at HOME. It starts with FAMILY. And Michele and I are very proud of ours.

"We've got to stop crying and start sweating, stop talking and start walking, stop cursing and start praying. The strength we need will not come from the White House, but from every house in America."- Jimmy Carter - "Crisis of Confidence"  - 1979