Three Layer Cake

Melvin Gill Strikes Back

When my father read the inaugural dysfunction piece for this website, “Know the People’s Will, Vote for Melvin Gill ”, he offered a great deal of input on ways I might improve the piece.  For example, he told me that he ran for mayor because the incumbent told him, “If you run for mayor, you’ll be taking food off my table.”  He clarified the hows and whats about his cowboy attire.  He also strongly denied that he runs for every race that comes up in his district for which he is qualified.  Well guess what I got on Friday?  I got the call.

 
In all fairness, the call was preceded by the email.  The email  informed me that he is on the ballot again.  He asked me to request an absentee ballot immediately so that I will vote for him.  (Grammar mechanics please note:  I know the difference between the present conditional and whatever tense that will represents in this sentence, and I assure you that will is the intended verb choice, no matter how wrong it is.)  He also asked me to ask my friend Y to do the same.
 

Then came the call.  The call was made under the false pretense of asking about a package he had sent which never arrived.  And then the election issue came up.  I asked him, “Hmph.  So what are you running for this time?”  He answered, “Aw, representative of the fifty-foeth congressional district”.  (Another note:  My father doesn’t generally talk like a hillbilly, but for some reason when I ask him pointed questions and he’d just prefer to get me off his back, he gets a ‘right southern’ accent).  I know, I know.  I should be supportive of him.  Of course he says I’m always tearing down his ideas, but who else do you know who runs for elected office as a hobby??   I think he even changed residences a few years ago solely based on his chances at winning an elected office, and admittedly he has done better at the polls since then.  But still I asked, “What makes you think you’re going to win this one?”  He said, “Because I think I can make a difference.”  And I said, ”Yeah, so does everybody.  What makes you think you can WIN.”  And he said, ”Becuz I’m runnin against two women.  And wail, the way ah see it is they’ll split the woman vote, and the rest will vote for me.”  This didn’t shock me, and it shouldn’t shock anyone reading this.  Actually, inside I laughed but I didn’t want to encourage him.  He just says these things to try to get me all bunged up.  I responded, ”If this is the best you can come up with, maybe you shouldn’t want to be in office!!!”  He responded in his usual way:  “Aw shoot, Kristina!”

There are a million and one reasons that I don’t think my father should continually run for office but his campaign platform is not one of them.  Don’t get me wrong, if there were anything I could do to legally help him win an election, I would.  But…but…I told him right then, “I think you might be crazy.”  He agreed (with the same air about him that he had when he said he thought he could win by splitting the female vote).  This was when I should have reminded him that during my childhood I never was able to sell candy bars door-to-door for my school fundraisers because people in the neighborhood really did think he was crazy and as a consequence they wouldn’t buy from me!!!!!!  I ended up buying all of my own candy bars to spare myself the humiliation.  And this was also when I should have reminded him of how humiliated a classmate of mine was when his father forced him to call our house one night, and this usually loud-mouthed kid (we weren't friends at school really) called with an oppressed and downtrodden voice to explain that his father wanted to speak to my father because he wanted to have a fundraiser for him at some hangout that I didn't even know non-Black people knew about where they would eat Nashville's best chicken wings and drink beer (and raise about $1.50).
 

I live 10,000 miles away from my father, but I continued to try to dissuade him.  The fear of being ridiculed upon sight at the Nashville Airport if I ever dare to come back home is too strong.  I can’t count the number of times we’ve had this conversation over the past twenty years.  The reason I can’t count them is because once I left home the family just started to hide it from me!  Once I did a Google search to see if he was up to mischief and I found his public declaration of contributors to his campaign and found out that his sister had made a contribution to his campaign!!  I finally told him in the nicest voice I’ve ever found within myself, “I’m so very sorry I can’t handle the stress of this phone call right now.  Thank you so much for calling.  I’ll let you know when the ballot gets here, ok?  Bye!” and I hung up.  I’ll never understand why he does this, but I think it’s time for me to take my husband’s last name…

Photo credit:  Laura Wile