the best debate

You can oohh and ahhh, and yell “Hell yeah!” or “Buuuull-shit!!!” at the TV during the Presidential debates all you want but there will never be a better debate than the one held during my senior year at Enloe High School. Among the candidates was none other than my friend Steve “Hawk” Murphy. Now, you know how there are cliques in school, the beautiful people, the smart people, the regulars and the druggies. Well, unfortunately Hawk and I belonged to the latter. Once, I had to drive him to somewhere in the foothills of the mountains for a court case that began at 9am. Of course, we stayed up drinking until 2am and with a 3 hour drive ahead of us neither of us got any sleep. Well on the way up, he threw up all over himself and it stunk so bad I pretty much had to drive with my head out the window the whole way. We sat in that courtroom with him WREAKING all morning, and the case didn’t even come up until the afternoon session which was awful in one way...the stench, but OK in another way…no one wanted to sit near us. Anyway, on a dare one day, our other buddy Bill Reeves talked Hawk into running for class President. It was all set up; Bill was his campaign manager and would lend him his marching band uniform for the debate. We pumped him up the night before with all of the right answers for the important issues concerning our classmates. But like any good politician, Hawk had a platform that he stood firmly on. While the other candidates talked about safety at football games, parking problems and the like, Hawk was adamant about the one issue near and dear to his heart, the art teacher, “Mrs. Mackie needs new paint brushes”. Yep, that was it and he hammered his point home in front of God and the whole senior class, in a forest green marching band uni no less! Wow! It was fantastic. There were times when he was asked questions and was speechless, but his closing arguments were absolutely priceless…and downright senseless. It was fuckin’ hilarious! It was all about them damn paintbrushes! After it was all over with, Hawk was doing a little work around the school house after school and Bill was kicked out of marching band for lending out the penguin suit. If only these Presidential debates could be so entertaining!