William Wednesday: A Sheriff's Race

Forgive me if you already know this story, I just love it too much not to document it. I've been wanting to post it for the past few Wednesdays but I wanted to have a picture of William's room first, and I mostly think of it at night time when his lights are off. Well, it's still night time and his lights are still off but I'm tired of postponing the writing. So, I'm just hoping one of these days I'll take a picture in the day time and update this poor little neglected blog of mine.

Side note, if you think the blog is neglected, you should feel real sympathy for our four legged friends. Layla? Nancy? Do you still live here???

Back in the spring one day I was driving William to target as he started in with his 4 year old daily dose of questions. They have a quota, you know, and William is nothing if not goal oriented. By golly, he's going to meet or beat that quota! So as I was trying to rapid fire answers as quickly as the questions were coming William paused for a minute and then asked, "mommy, what does that green sign say?"

At this point William was contemplating the idea of reading. He was fascinated by the make-up of words and phonetic sounds but he wasn't reading anything beyond 3 letter sight words. However, he loved to learn what things said and I'm sure it played into him teaching himself to read.

"It says, Steve Bernal, Monterey County Sheriff" I explained. Now, I wasn't quite sure how to say Mr. Bernal's name and I wasn't all that interested in the sheriff's race myself, so to make it a little more fun I said his name in a somewhat silly pronunciation. "Steeeeeeve Bernawwwwwwl" is how I'd spell it.

"who is Steeeeeeve Bernawwwwwwl? Why does he have a sign?"
"Well, he is running for Sheriff so he's putting signs up so that people will want him to win. See the black sign? That one says Fred Garcia. He is also running"
"oh. I like Steeeeeeve Bernawwwwwl. He runs like you!" he said as he reminisced my glory days of my half marathon. (one day....one day i'll run again....) 

And thus began a 6-8 month love interest between William and the Sheriff's race. There were 4 candidates and William was very familiar with each of their signs: Fred Garcia, the incumbent Scott Miller, Steve Bernal, and someone who clearly didn't win as I don't remember his name. When friends would ask William who he thought would win he'd respond by saying, "Steve Bernal is going to win because he runs faster than Fred Garcia". I loved the logic too much to correct it for awhile. Gotta let him stay little as long as I can.

I didn't follow the election or the process much at first, so when all of the signs disappeared in May I just assumed someone had won...and I didn't quite care who. Well, lo and behold a couple of months ago signs started popping back up. But this time, there were only two candidates: Steve Bernal and Scott Miller. You can't even Imagine William's excitement when he started to see the signs reappearing all over town. I soon learned that the primaries were in the spring and the top 2 candidates were running and would be voted upon in the November elections.

William was a fence sitter and he flip flopped between who he wanted to win. Generally he'd change his mind once Austin or I decided we agreed with him, and he loved to tell us he hoped "our" favorite lost to his new favorite - OH the competition! It was a heated race here in the Wallis house. And it was about to get even better.

One day I was walking down the hallway at work when I noticed 2 Steve Bernal yard signs sitting outside the office of one of our partners. My friend, who had been educated by William on his interest in the race, told me I needed to find out if the signs were free for the taking. Well, turns out one of our clients is related to Steve and was passing out yard signs for his campaign. Now, I didn't know Steve, and I certainly didn't know what he stood for. But I did know one thing: I needed one of his signs.

SO! Imagine William's excitement one day when I brought home a STEVE BERNAL YARD SIGN!!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY BIRTHDAY, THE DAY COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER. William's instant reaction was, "WHAT?! For ME?! And guess what mommy?? It can go in my ROOM! Because I have a race room...race CARS and SHERIFF race. We can hang it on my wall!"

For the last month or two we've read books every night as Steve Bernal's campaign poster sits in our peripheral. It's quite the sight, and I don't think the sign is coming down any time soon. After what turned out to be the most heated Sheriff's race in Monterey County history (i'm not even exaggerating) and after TWO WEEKS of vote counting, they finally announced that Steve Bernal, the underdog, had in fact come from behind to overtake the incumbent much to many surprised residents.

This was William's first experience with political elections and i'd say it was a slam dunk. He loved it! For me, it was probably the most eventful and exciting election since 2000 when we heard for DAYS "THIS JUST IN: Florida has NOW been pulled back into the undecided column".

It doesn't get better than this. And, just for you, I decided to risk waking the bear and I turned on the light for a photo. Please note if my son had not inherited the opinionated gene I would have had a much better placement for the sign, but he insisted it belonged right where you see it. So here's a peak into the mommy-William designed sheriff race car room!