The Election 2/5

As the kids are leaving school, Nellie is admonishing the girl who seconded her nomination for not doing it fast enough. The girl is all like “whatever, just keep the candy coming.” Following them are Mary and Jim, the former thanking the latter. “It’s nice, you being a boy and all,” Mary says. I have to wonder if Laura would have nominated Mary, unless nominating goes against Leviticus or something. Regardless, Jim says he just wanted to be fair and I’m not really sure what that is supposed to mean in this situation. Mary thanks him again despite this little logic lapse and heads home. Jim sticks around to reconvene with the prankster set. Oh, it turns out that their plan is to not only split the girl vote by having two female nominees but use Elmer to prove that he can beat the smartest kids in the class. Does it count as schadenfreude if you plan for it? That doesn’t seem right.

That evening at the homestead, Laura and Mary are busy working at the table. Laura puts down her crayon and shows Mary the campaign poster she designed: “Vote for Mary (underlined in red) The best cantitate [sic].” Mary says “no”, obviously, but Laura says the kids won’t care. It’s sad that almost 140 years later that would still probably hold true.

As Mary evaluates the poster some more, Pa enters the house. “Pa, you’ll never guess,” Laura says. Pa takes a couple stabs at Laura’s news: “You got 100 on an arithmetic test. You got a zero on an arithmetic test. Your sister Mary got nominated for class president.” Laura accuses her father of peeking, but he says he heard about it from Nels. Pa congratulates Mary and calls her Madame President. Mary says he should be congratulating Nellie, but Laura calls herself Campaign Manager and says that her sister is going to win. Carrie (you remember her – the one who falls down the hill all the time?) says that she’ll vote for Mary. Pa believes that more than the Ingalls girls will vote for Mary, but the candidate doesn’t think so since Nellie is going to have a campaign party. “Nellie invited all the girls to her house except us for ice cream and cake tomorrow,” Laura says. I guess Mary is running as a candidate for the Pity Party. Pa goes against the party’s mission statement by suggesting the girls host their own event the following weekend.

Meanwhile, Elmer is at his place tending to the chickens in the coop. As he takes particular care of one chicken, Elmer’s father enters the barn. He greets his son who reports that the chicken’s neck is looking a lot better. Oh, I get it. The wounded birds are a metaphor. That’s one of the tricks of the trade I’ve learned in the last couple of weeks: anything that seems heavy handed or cannot be easily explained can just be described as “artistic vision” or a “metaphor”. Try it in your day to day life: it is amazingly liberating. Anyway, Elmer asks if the other chickens will attack this bird again if he reintroduces it to the flock. Pa says that they might and it’s just in their nature. I’m just waiting for a spider to weave “Some Pig” over Elmer’s head. Pa tells Elmer it is time to wash up for supper. Elmer says he just needs to feed his rabbit and then he’ll be done. Please let the rabbit be named George, please. Lenny would be even more awesome.

Elmer changes the subject before we learn more about the rabbit. He tells his Pa about the nomination. Rather than congratulating his son, Pa asks who nominated Elmer. “Joel and Kenny,” Elmer replies. They also appointed themselves as Elmer’s campaign managers. Pa doesn’t like where this is going and checks to make sure that Elmer is talking about the kids that pick on him and not some other Joel/Kenny combo (Koel? Jenny?). Elmer is being all Pollyanna about the whole situation which doesn’t seem to sit well with Pa. He doesn’t say anything at the moment and decides to remind Elmer that supper is almost ready.

Pa goes back into the house where Mrs. Elmer’s Mom is setting the table. The parents chit chat about what Elmer is up to in the barn. Ma likes that he takes such good care of the animals, but Pa is concerned that if they aren’t careful there will be sick stray animals all up in their business. At least the kid has aptitude in some area. Pa walks over to Ma and tells her that the “dag burn Turner boys” were the ones who nominated Elmer. Ma reminds her husband to remind Elmer that he should not count on winning. Wait, why are these parents being realistic? Don’t they watch this show? I don’t have a Good Mommy/Good Daddy tag.

Ma walks over to the kitchen to do final dinner preparations as Pa draws out the wounded bird metaphor. This is also where they confirm that Elmer is a little slower than the rest of the kids, just in case that wasn’t already clear. They also reflect on whether it was a good idea to keep Elmer out of school for a couple of years after a bad experience in Springfield. Pa wonders if maybe they should have kept him out of school in Walnut Grove. “He wants to go, Sam,” Ma says. Sam contemplates this as he stares at a fire in the hearth. Ma gives her husband a hug. Aww, don’t be sad Dobkins family.