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Sean had never stared into as many blank-eyed faces before. Throughout the high school civics talk, he felt as if he were speaking to the kids in a foreign language, one they had no intention of learning. Scrambling for a way to reach his audience, he ad-libbed, tossing out anecdotes about his own years at Coral Beach High. He confessed that as a teenager his decision to run for student government had been little more than a wily excuse to approach the best-looking girls. But what ultimately hooked his interest in student government was the startling discovery that the kids at school, all so different—jocks, nerds, preppies, and brains—could unite behind a common cause.
During his senior year, when he’d been president of the student council, Coral Beach High raised seven thousand dollars to aid Florida’s hurricane victims. Wouldn’t that be something to feel good about? Sean asked his teenage audience.
The response he received was as rousing as a herd of cows chewing their cud. Except this group was blowing big pink bubbles with their gum.
The question and answer period, too, turned out to be a joke. The teens’ main preoccupation: his salary and whether he got driven around town in a chauffeured limo. When they learned he was willing to work for peanuts and that he drove an eight-year-old convertible, he might as well have stamped a big fat L on his forehead. He was weak-kneed with relief when at last the principal mounted the auditorium steps and thanked Sean for his electrifying speech.
While Sean was politically seasoned enough to put the morning’s snafus behind him, and not worry overmuch that the apathetic bunch he’d just talked to represented America’s future voters, it was the high school principal’s long-winded enthusiasm, telling Sean how much of an inspiration he was for these kids, that truly set Sean’s teeth on edge. And made him even later for the final meeting of the day, the coral reef advisory panel.
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