Dwyeropolis

When I was in high school, I helped my friend J.P. with his candidacy for student body president (ultimately unsuccessful, alas).  As part of the campaign, J.P. purchased a remote-controlled blimp (this model, as I recall)  on which the slogan “Vote J.P.” (or something to that effect) was emblazoned.  Campaign volunteers (i.e., guys from our dorm) flew the blimp in the dining hall at lunch and dinner to gin up support.  The blimp was enough (well, that and the fact that he was well known, popular, charming, and a two-sport captain) to get him past the first round and into the final three, who got to give speeches before the entire student body in the chapel before the final round of voting.  (Andover’s election rules were a weird amalgam of the state of Louisiana and Project Runway.)  The school had strict rules against the use of posters or props at the final speeches, but some unethical advisers* suggested the blimp be unleashed from the choir loft at the climax of the speech anyway.  It would be a dramatic finish, he was assured, that might put him over the top, and there was simply no way the school would invalidate his election just because he’d unleashed a blimp during the speeches.  Ethical to a fault, J.P. refused this advice and kept the blimp in its hangar.  To this day, part of me thinks he’d have won if he’d just busted out the damn blimp (though, with a little more maturity than I had at 17, I understand he was right to not use it).

Why do I tell this not-especially-interesting story from my past?  No reason. 

*OK, me.

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