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Glad I Didn’t Win
Written By: Donna Rhodes | Issue: 2016/05 - May
Even if you didn’t like Jimmy Carter, the President, chances are you admire Carter, the Humanitarian. His international diplomacy backed up by his work with Habitat for Humanity, earned him 2002’s Nobel Peace Prize. He will go down in history as a man of quality, brilliance, and character …a Southern gentleman with a goofy-toothy grin, who perhaps was too honest for the office of president.
I had the opportunity to meet President Carter in Orlando at a book signing. He and his daughter Amy wrote a children’s book, “The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer.”
Hundreds of people stood in line, baking in the Florida sun, “Fleejers” in hand, just to meet the President. Secret Service agents swarmed the area like black-suited ants. And rightly so. Carter was a terrorist target. Security was so tight we were told not to engage the President in any kind of exchange. Just hand him the book. Let him sign it. Retrieve it and be on our way.
A rule-follower by nature, I was okay with that. But the closer I got to Carter, snaking though a line that seemed miles long, the more I practiced saying what I wasn’t going to say. I snapped out of my reverie as the alpha black suit ushered me to the table. I lay down my book. And then, as Carter was scrawling his signature, out of the blue, words came pouring from my mouth. “President Carter,” I said. “This past election there wasn’t a single candidate on the ballot that came close to your integrity and experience. So I wrote in your name.”
He looked up at me over the rim of his glasses, grinned an octave of piano-key teeth, and said in that unmistakable South Jawja drawl, “Well, I sure am glad I didn’t win!”
