Free My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere by Susan Orlean

now?”
    “I have a need occasionally.”
    “And what kind of equipment do you have now?”
    “We used to have a black one, I believe, and now we have an ivory one.”
    Jim then recounted the incident of the telephone without a cord with some discomfort. “I think Pat tried one of those touch phones or wireless phones,” he said. “I don’t know where she secured it, but I think she took it back.”
    Pat is more open-minded. “I was with my sister a while ago, and while we drove around she used her cellphone in the car, and it was great,” she said after Jim had turned the equipment back over to her. “The trouble is, if I had a cellphone, I’d probably call people.”
    “Do you wish you’d kept the phone without the cord?”
    “Yes, definitely. See, I thought it would be nice to have when Jim’s out in the garage working, and it’s time for dinner, and I have to scream and yell like a banshee to let him know that dinner’s ready. I thought if he had the phone, I could just call him.”
    “So are you still screaming and yelling?”
    “No, we’ve got something better now,” Pat said. “We just installed a really nice dinner bell.”

 
    Madame President
     
     
     
    Tiffanie Lewis, the current student body president of Martin Luther King Jr. High School in Manhattan, wrote a campaign slogan for herself and her running mate, Crystal Belle, that went something like “If You’re Not Down with Voting for Tiffanie and Crystal, Then I Have Two Words for You: Suck It.” The slogan would certainly have been popular, since “Suck It” is the motto of the eminent wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin, or maybe of the eminent wrestlers D-Generation X—at the time Tiffanie was telling me this story she couldn’t remember which—and in either case it would have thrown some votes her way. But she didn’t use the “Suck It” slogan. She decided that it was too rude, which is not at all what she and Crystal are like as candidates, or as people, and not at all the image they wanted to put forward in connection with Martin Luther King Jr. High School. When you’re proud of your school but know that it once had a reputation for chaos and violence, and is stuck with the nickname Horror High, you pay attention to these things. Tiffanie ended up using three other slogans. One was “Time for Some Women to Be in Charge!,” which referred to the fact that all past student body presidents of King had been male. She had also considered pointing out that she and Crystal would be the first black students to run the school in four years. But “we thought that wasn’t a good approach,” she says. “I mean, everyone’s supposed to be united.” Another slogan was “Drop the Zero and Get Down with the Heroes.” This was an oblique poke at two other presidential candidates, who had academic and attendance problems and were gaining support by arguing that they were better representatives of the average, imperfect King student than Tiffanie and Crystal, who came to school and earned good grades. Tiffanie’s most popular poster had a colorful background and the slogan “And You Don’t Know? Vote for Tiffanie Lewis and Crystal Belle.” The line “And You Don’t Know?” was the refrain from a hit song by rapper Cam’Ron; it didn’t actually mean anything, but everyone loved it.
    When Tiffanie talks about winning the election, she chokes up. “I’m a very emotional person,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I just am. I cry at a lot of things. I cried at Titanic, and I cried at the lunar eclipse.” She cried like mad when she found out that she had won the presidential election. I almost made her cry when we first met and I mistakenly wrote her name down as “Tiffany,” like the jewelry store, rather than “Tiffanie.” After she corrected me, I asked if people made that mistake often.”All the time,” she said, sounding melancholy.
    Tiffanie is not a tall person, but she has a big body and a cute, booming