Day 8 Blog-Off: A Love Story

Today’s Generous Souls are Liz and her husband Jeff (also known as my brother). Liz wanted to make sure that even though the donation came through in her name, it really comes from both of them.

Don’t know what I’m talking about?  Click here to find out.

Remember, Liz, you asked for it.

In 1999 Jeff and Liz were plucked from their happy, early twenty-something lives—Liz from D.C., Jeff from Austin, Texas—by that secret society at Yale that isn’t supposed to exist. Clinton wanted to make sure that he would be succeeded by his vice president. Cheney wanted to make sure that he wasn’t. So Clinton, through his political connections, found a woman who scored 962 on her LSAT. And rumor has it that she was blind drunk when she took the test. That woman was Liz.

The Clinton Camp found this to be very impressive.

Cheney found Jeff through Bush’s Texas connections.

“A Mexican?” The Deciders at Yale Law School clicked their teeth.

“You don’t understand. This guy breaks EVERYTHING. It’s like he has a superpower. You couldn’t train the entire Marine Corps to do so much damage so quickly. Besides, he’s only half-Mexican.”

So Jeff and Liz went to Yale Law School under the pretenses of becoming really good lawyers, but really they were sent forth to win the presidency for their candidates. Jeff would get messages on his secret decoder ring. Liz received messages in the law school library. Everyone else just thought she played a lot of Scrabble.

But then something happened that no one expected. Not even Cheney.

Jeff and Liz fell in love—Gift of the Magi-style.

In fall of 2000, Jeff decided to give Liz the best present of all: a Gore Presidency. And Liz decided to give Jeff the best present of all: a Bush Presidency.

So when Jeff’s secret decoder ring told him, “Mail some ballot readers to Florida. Make sure nothing happens to them,” he purposely dropped them as he was loading the truck.

And when Liz was asked her opinion about the ballot design, (“I call it a butterfly ballot!” the designer exclaimed.) She did not say, “That looks confusing.” Instead she said, “Looks good to me.”

On election night, Jeff and Liz held hands and ate microwave popcorn. They watched the results come in. And they both knew that they had made grave mistakes.

Jeff had one card left to play: Sandra Day O’Connor, Supreme Court Justice and graduate of the high school where his mother taught. He sent Sandy an email from the little desk in his room.

            From: littlecricket@hotmail.com
            To: ladyscotus@aol.com
            Subject: calling in a favor :)

But before Jeff could type the message, his office chair collapsed and his elbow hit the “Send” button. Jeff crashed to the floor, pulling the computer cords out of the wall. By the time he rebooted his Compaq computer, the damage had been done.

“Little Cricket’s calling in a favor,” Lady Scotus whispered into her secret decoder ring, totally misinterpreting what the favor was.

“Then I concede,” sighed the Vice President. “You know, I’ve always wanted to win a peace prize. Maybe I’ll do that instead.”

Luckily, the love between Jeff and Liz was stronger than any silly thrown election and two years later, the couple wed.

On their honeymoon, Jeff tossed his secret decoder ring into the ocean.