Political Struggles

The future Senator Schmidling had his first political loss. I still feel badly for Polar Bear five days later. He has already been Patrol Leader for six months in Scouts, so he decided to run for Senior Patrol Leader. He spent two hours organizing his thoughts and ideas into a speech last Monday. He seriously had new plans which I thought sounded appealing. He practiced his speech three times, even allowing Dorito and Winger to toss out questions and comments. He asked for his hair to be trimmed, then he showered and wore all the correct parts of his Scout uniform (including a rope on his belt and flashlight to show he was prepared for anything). He had also done a little politicking with his closest pals and felt certain of their votes. He was not, however, prepared to lose.
His opponent showed up late.
His opponent was not wearing his Scout uniform.
His opponent did not prepare a speech.
So Polar Bear went first, and then the other boy appeared to copy parts of the speech. During Q&A time, he seemed to echo Ben's answers as his own. The vote came out as a tie, but some older boys had written in a fictitious candidate. After the re-vote and loss, Polar Bear stuck it out until the end of the meeting. But there were wet eyes when everyone got home. Such a life lesson for all of us.