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Which found the weather too bad for washing windows, so –
Since I have said right out loud I was willing to serve as either recorder or secretary-treasurer for NAPA, it seems only fair to inform the electorate of my qualifications (or lack of them) based on
My Life as a Minor Executive
It has occurred to me recently that I have been spending an increasing amount of my time as a minor executive; or, more accurately, as minor executives. This started some years ago when I was elected secretary of my college alumni association, and began writing up the minutes of the executive committee meetings. Since all the other executives were men, they gossiped so much I was never sure what was to be relayed to the public via the pages of the secretary’s book, and what was better broadcast over the back fence. The result of this uncertainty was that most of the minutes began: “The minutes of the preceding meeting were read and approved as amended.” By the time I was not reelected after two years, I had developed such an inferiority complex about taking notes I resolved never to be a secretary again. I subsequently repealed the resolution, but for a time it was a struggle to remember I was supposed to be recording the discussion, not just listening to it.
Next I became treasurer of the Sunday School. This was an office I accepted under the illusion bookkeeping consisted of one column for incoming funds and a second for outgoing. Instead I was presented with a ledger measuring 12” X 15”, weighing five pounds and running eleven columns to the page. When I made out my first annual report, I tried to balance that book with all the loving care a seal devotes to balancing a ball on its nose. The seal does it in less time. The saddest part about it was it balanced all along, but I did not know how to prove it. From that day on each of the last three columns was headed by a lightly penciled inscription explaining what to put with which to get that. Since this worked out satisfactorily, I developed no trauma about the treasurership.
Concurrently I was elected vice president of the church Youth Group. About a month after the election I had to preside at a meeting. The president had arranged for the speaker and taken care of other details, so all I was supposed to do was keep things moving. When the meeting began, the speaker had not yet arrived, but shortly thereafter several strange faces entered. Accordingly, at the proper moment I started to aim my introductory remarks in their direction. Just as I was rounding off the second sentence, someone interrupted to say the speaker was still not present. He never did show up. I understand he was an alcoholic, but that may have been a coincidence.
Some time later I met the president of the Latin Club in a store. He said he was calling an executive board meeting and would Thursday suit me? I said Thursday was fine, but I was not an executive. He insisted the records proved I was vice president. I still do not recall ever having been elected. And of course that year they decided veepee should be in charge of arranging Latin Week for the schools.
Naturally the president became sick and I had to take over. “Naturally” because the next time I was vice president the same thing happened. When I was president, the speaker for the first meeting arrived with the pie, the program chairman was incapacitated the whole year by illness, and the hotel where we met declined to take the last meeting because of the presence of a convention. President or vice president I refuse to be: it’s too hard on the health of the executive committee. Also on me.
One of my last appointments was chairman of the recognition committee at the school where I taught. When the powers that be began explaining what they meant by recognition, the committee unanimously recommended a dictionary be consulted in the interest of more accurate speech. Then the other two members resigned. A similar experience occurred during my NAPA executive judgeship when the other two judges were fired. If I continue to be all that is left of a committee, it is possible I shall cease to be a minor executive and become a dictator instead. Caveat Emptor!
Youth Springs Eternal
I used to argue girls with names
Like Ginger, Ted or Sue
Would find the same undignified
When they were forty-two
But I have lived, and I have learned,
And I no longer strive.
I know the name that suits at six
Will suit at sixty-five.
For sans their teeth, their curves, their curls,
They never cease to be “The Girls.”
Thought for the Day
Why can’t a woman realize
It isn’t always exactly wise
To persist in the styles that caught her eyes
At a third her age and half the size.
Louise Lincoln and A. Walrus
Published at Columbus, Ohio 43209
With the usual assistance of Alf Babcock,
Cranford, N. J.