Here's a little insight into me. I have a short attention span, I bore easily and when that happens my mind wanders.
It's not that I think that I am above the world or anything like that, it's just that, well, I like pretty, shiny things.
So, while it may be important to listen to what the clerk, or doctor, or policeman is saying, I find myself imagining different scenarios and then playing them out.
Winning a Pulitzer, winning a Grammy, hearing the foreman say "not guilty," you know the usual fantasies.
Recently, with all the attention and focus on who will be the next president, my mind has increasingly wandered back to the same idea and it has made me realize something.
There is no way I could ever be president.
First of all, to become president you have to cater to the two groups of people that you could say "I am not fans of" " ideological whack jobs and the elderly.
You wanna be the most powerful person in the world? You gotta impress the whack jobs in your party and then you gotta impress the huge voting block that is the elderly. It appears you accomplish this mostly by expressing half-truths while looking them in the eye.
Frankly I don't like spending that much time at Denny's at 4:30 p.m.
Yet there is a bigger reason that will immediately prevent me from holding the highest office in the land: I call it "college."
To be president these days, you have to realize it in your 20s and surround yourself with fine upstanding people.
I have not.
For those of you who aren't familiar with how presidential politics works, here's a little insight.
You decide you want be president. You've got the experience, you've got the support and you love the elderly. OK, what next?
Well, now you sit down in a room of people and tell them every potentially damaging incident of your past so they can prepare for it to come out.
Make no mistake, it will come out.
When I imagine how my conversation would go, I realize there ain't no way to spin some of my "incidents."
"OK Sen. Shipley, let me get this straight. You consumed a large amount of alcohol and then proceeded to strip down to your underwear and run around the fountain in a public park."
"Yeah, that's about right."
"About right? What did I leave out?"
"Well it wasn't exactly the same every time."
"Each time! You mean to tell me you did this more than once?"
"Every Thursday."
"OK, we'll come back to that. Tell me about the indecent exposure incident."
"Hee hee hee, yeah, you're gonna want to sit down. First of all, it wasn't my fault ..."
Now, I know what you are thinking " didn't get caught, so who's gonna find out?
Oh, people would find out.
Look at the presidential candidates and look who their roommates were in college. Supreme Court judges, heads of business and industry, powerful people.
I roomed with a kid who actually hit on a cop while being arrested. Anyone willing to do that is going to sing like a canary when the news shows pony up a check.
I picture one of my friends standing in front of the cameras with this solemn look as the flashbulbs go off.
"Members of the media, I have disturbing information about presidential candidate Shipley, or as I know him "Golden Thunder." If you will refer the pictures in your packet ..."
It's about this point in my daydreaming when Kate shakes me and tells me I missed the turn and what was I thinking about.
I look her straight in the eye, smile and say, "Fountains honey, I was thinking about how pretty fountains are."
Hmm, maybe I could be president after all.
Think I could be president? Tell me about it.
- Jarid Shipley is features editor for the Nevada Appeal. Contact him a jshipley@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.