Besides making posters and generally speech making and assembly skits
the candidates for third vice president had to produce a mornings
worth of announcements as kind of an audition for the job. I had been
on quite a few times so I had some great ideas for selling my brand
but I had some technical difficulties in that the reigning third vice
and his protege were unwilling to work the knobs and my friends in
the media class had spent all of there time exploring the different
colors of the unsupervised wastrel rainbow. They had started out as a
little dim to begin with but a few months of doing exactly nothing
for the class period but sitting in the studio on playing cards had
for some unfathomable reason failed to educate them properly. We were
not high and dry because we knew how to turn on the camera and
initiate the telecast. What we would not have was green screen
special effects and title animation. I was reduced to using just the
pure white hot power of my charisma and charm and try and overcome
the tragic lack of a animated star field in the background. It was
almost time for prom at my school and some hilarious vandals had
changed a few of the letters in the signs to make an immature joke.
Contrary to popular belief it was not me, I wished it had been - but
it was not. They switched the “O” and the “R” and ripped a
leg off of the “'M” so that the innocent invitation to prom now
seemed to invite the school to porn instead. I decided to use this as
my lead and I started the telecast by telling everyone good morning
and then informing the school that the signs that read porn were, in
fact, advertisements for prom. I said it was okay if they had already
bought tickets expecting something else all they needed to do was buy
a second ticket and get a date. It was not on my prepared and vetted
speech but I could tell from the laughter coming from the library
outside of the studio that it was a hit and that got me rolling. I
laid down the rest of the schools morning business with the offhanded
confidence of someone who had been here before and had nothing to
prove. The prom not porn public service joke was not universally
appreciated. Many teacher said told me it was the first time they had
ever laughed at a morning announcement joke while others were deeply
offended for some reason. The vice principle whom I had a very
antagonistic relationship with was one of those who were not
impressed. He called me into his office and the kid I was running
against was in their already when I arrived. They had both worked
themselves into a bit of a tizzy by the time I sat down and they were
mad because I had not stuck to the approved notes and that I had made
a joke about porn. The vice principle got it into his little piggy
mind that I had altered the signs for the sake of the joke. Feeling
that this little meeting was below my dignity I started subtly
mocking them both. I cleared up that I had not altered the signs and
I suggested that I went off script to clarify what the signs meant
because I thought there were kids who would be genuinely confused. I
used my tricky debate words to twist what they were saying and to
keep myself just out of the range of the hammer of banishment and
disqualification while pretending I was agreeing with them. They knew
what I was doing but couldn't figure out a way to hold my feet to
the fire and so let me off with a warning, which I disregarded two
days later when I went off script for my assembly skit.
