Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Friday, September 01, 2006 1:00:35 PM
There was a bit of malarkey going on in the Beauprez Campaign Headquarters this week, and I was inadvertently in the center of it.
First, a little background. If you look at my bio, you will see something about the summer I spent with the Southwestern Company being one of the most valuable things I ever did. They are a company which recruits about 3000 college students a year to do door to door sales in the summer, after a week of training in Nashville.
I did it in 1966 (the same year Ken Starr worked for them, but in a different division) and have used it ever since. Their training is excellent. One of the things they stress is the need to have a positive attitude, and how to bring yourself up mentally when you are down.
They had an exercise to do that. They told you to jump in the air three times as high as you could with your arms extended, yelling at the top of your lungs at the top of the first jump "I FEEL HEALTHY," on the second "I FELL HAPPY," and finally, "I FEEL TERRIFIC!" Believe it or not, it works. (Ken Starr described that exercise in a July 20 USA Today article, "College Students Learn From the School of Hard Knocks," though he said he did it in front of a mirror.)
We have a young paid Republican staffer, Donnie, who comes to work in the campaign headquarters. I'm quite impressed with him. One day he admired my phone skills, so I started teaching him or telling him about some of the things I have learned through life that contributed to them, one of them being this exercise because he also walks precincts.
So, yesterday, we had a volunteer in who commented to me that he hates making phone calls. I love making phone calls, so I asked him why. Hangups! I told him my little trick to deal with that and he didn't believe that it worked, so I suggested we go see Donnie, who had been using it successfully for a couple of weeks.
The next thing I know, Donnie has me doing the "I FEEL HEALTHY" routine for the volunteers. Just to put this in perspective, since 1966, I have done this exercise exactly seven times, six in 1981, and once yesterday.
I know everyone in the headquarters who heard us this thought we were nuts! Someday, the folks in this campaign are going to tell me not to come back. I'm sure of it!