Not too long ago, I wrote about my fantasy of how I would break the news to my family and tell them that I wanted to run for public office.
       The vision went like this: I would deploy projectors, statistics, voter registration information, graphic displays and fundraising schemes to persuade them that they could give up Mom for a few months and she could pursue serving the common good of the bigger whole – even if it’s “just” a 6,000-person bigger whole.
     As some readers may recall, my youngest child busted up that plan but good after he noticed a book on my night table called, How to Win A Local Election. Having just completed a civics lesson on local government a couple of months earlier, he put two and two together and nailed me before I could make the sell. Luckily, my family has played along nicely with the basis for that fantasy – my dream of running for office – so I probably was, once again, overpreparing to oversell.
     Now, as adults and especially as parents, we talk a lot about being good role models, walking the walk and putting our money where our mouths are. In this case, however, many thanks go to my son for proving the relevance of what would otherwise be just clichés. Barely a month ago, and now in the next grade, my son who caught me in the act of seeking elected office decided that he would run for office.
     We have a daily school-day routine when my kids come home that involves them giving me their lunch bags and all “parent” papers. One day this fall, during that chore, my son’s blank form for a student council candidate’s speech wafted out of his trapper. As I picked it up and read it simultaneously, I asked him about it.
     “So are you thinking of running this year?” I asked.
     “I am, but I don’t want you to read what I write.” I could tell he was firm in this assertion because he swiped the document from my hand and marched up to his bedroom, folding the paper in half and hiding it away for a week.
     Eventually, my son did let me read his stump speech, but not until the morning that he would be giving his presentation. By then, nothing I could say to him would impact his campaign plan. So I just wished him luck and smiled as he left for school.
     I had to pick him up that day because he had a doctor’s appointment. As I parallel-played at home all day working on my campaign, I wondered to myself how it had gone for him.
     As soon as he opened the car door and slung his backpack inside, I assumed that he would burst out with, “I won!” or slump over with a, “Well, there’s always next year.”
     Instead, all I got was a “did you bring me a snack to have in the car on the way to the doctor’s office?”
     Huh?
     “Hey! How about the student council elections? How did it goooooo?” Look, if I’m not getting closure on my race for what feels like an eternity, the least I can get is satisfaction from my son’s experience.
     “Oh, yeah. I won.” He was enthusiastic, sincerely, but exclamation marks just would not do it justice.
     As it turned out, he faced 10 competitors, all of whom read their prepared statements to the classroom. Then they voted. According to my son, who said that this was according to his teacher, he won more than half the votes in the class, which, in a race with a total of 11 candidates and 23 students, sounds like a pure landslide.
     This story is cute all on its own, right? Lots of kids see the movie Election and watch the zeal of actress Reese Witherspoon’s character as she sets out to get elected as her high school class president.
     Here’s the final hanging chad to count on why we should practice what we preach: My son ran for student council even though he had lost in the previous year. Now that made this mother proud.
     Jill Miller Zimon is an active mom and a winner in her own right, taking a Pepper-Pike Council seat in the Nov. 3 election. Check out her posts at blogher.com.