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If I Were An 18 Year-Old State Legislator

Obviously a teenager should be elected to political office. Obviously. I just wish I'd thought of it first.

By Emily Rowley
The young political mind at work.
The young political mind at work.

In case you missed it (or you get all of your up-to-the-minute political coverage from a sporadically updated pop culture website), America went to the polls this week.  Among the many SUPER ENCOURAGING results, my home state of West Virginia chose to elect 18 year-old Saira Blair to the state legislature.

Clearly, this is a fantastic idea.

The beautiful folly of youth is that you still think your existence is important and your thoughts are valid. You've not yet been worn down by the cynical reality that in life, as in, "Whose Line is it Anyway?" the rules are made up and the points don't matter. As a teenager, Ms. Blair can bring to the legislature the kind of certainty of opinion that can only come with never holding a real job, living on her own, or being forced to recognize that adulthood, for all its chaos and poetry, is a largely pointless march towards decay and painful death.

In fact, I'm so enthusiastic about this well thought-out decision by my fellow West Virginians that I began thinking about how much good I could have done if only I had chosen to run for state office back when I was still in high school and too young to even vote. And since, much like a teenage legislator, I'm convinced my stupid opinions are worth sharing, this is what I came up with:

  • A Gadzook's in every mall.
  • Amend the state constitution to ban those bitches who were mean to me in 7th grade.
  • All legislative decisions made only after listening to Sublime's, "What I Got" on repeat for 37 minutes.
  • Thoroughly in the pocket of Big Scrunchie.
  • Governmental decree that TBS's "Dinner and a Movie" is actually, "a super cool way to spend your Friday night." (Aw.)
  • something something something I don't want to take calculus anymore
  • Decriminalization of creepy old dudes outside the Go-Mart that you convince to buy you Boon's Farm with change from the floorboard of your '91 Jeep Cherokee.
  • Cussing. For it.
  • Deadlocks determined by Bop It.
  • Platform made entirely of s'mores Pop Tarts and David Boreanaz.