Homecoming

It's homecoming time in Hastings, sports fans! My dad picked me up at about 2:30 from Lincoln, and we just got back into town. The reason was twofold: (1) my car had broken down, but was now fixed in Hastings, and so the trip from Hastings to Lincoln and back again was inevitable for him (whether it was he driving a vehicle and my mother driving my vehicle, their leaving my vehicle in Lincoln, and then driving back together in Hastings; or whether he picked me up from Lincoln, took me back to Hastings, and I drove my car back to Lincoln myself); and (2) my brother's Homecoming at Hastings High School is this evening, and my brother has been nominated for the prestigious position of Homecoming King. So, it made sense for me to come home, go to all the Homecoming festivities, and return tomorrow morning in time for a friend's wedding in Lincoln.

We are all really excited for my brother. The semi-humorous part about all this is that I, when I was in high school, ended up taking the Homecoming King crown for the class of 2002. I don't generally volunteer this information because the title "Homecoming King" conjures a different image in most people's heads than the sort of monarch I actually was. You see, I was not all that particularly popular, nor was I a jock, nor really anything that should have stuck out in any traditional sense.

So how did I usurp the throne of Tiger-land? In terms of geo-political affairs, the events leading up to my coronation were more complicated than those leading up to World War I.

It all started when I voted to nominate myself and my immediate friends. I mainly did it as a joke, but apparently a lot of other people were in on the joke as well.

But my seizing the throne basically came together because I carried the band vote. All the jocks and popular kids split their respective votes amongst themselves, but I was the solitary band member on the ballot. I think that I also carried the drama vote and part of the choir vote, but those were relatively small groups, with most of the major figures in both were also in band.

The political anomaly no one would have factored in was the freshman girl vote, of which I had a cult following. I'm still not exactly sure what that was all about, but there were several freshman girls who actually wore small pieces of paper that they taped to themselves that said, "I voted for Jacob Gerber, did you?" As long as there are historians, I think that they will be puzzling over that one.

So that's the story, recorded for posterity's sake. And as I read it, I'm glad that I'm not in high school anymore.