A Girl Named Kelsi

 Once, while dining in Council Bluffs, Iowa, my friend and I ordered veggie burgers. They were listed on the menu. What arrived was a white, dented hamburger bun filled with mayo, iceberg lettuce and a limp tomato slice. An interesting twist on what we had come to know.
Council Bluffs, Iowa, is a place I think of often and fondly, despite its cuisine. It's home to a host of fine, friendly, passionate folks, beautiful wide open skies, and, every four years, the Iowa Caucus. Not, as it turned out, home of the veggie burger. (Side Note: Also home to Razzle Dazzle, a tiny strip club where I enjoyed several margaritas and some interesting conversation with the ladies who worked there.)
I came to know the town when I volunteered for a presidential campaign. Do you remember John Edwards? Not the psychic, that's John Edward. I'm talking about the former political hopeful. Remember him? Southerner, charming, big white smile, shiny hair, married to a kickass lady...she had cancer...remember now? Right, he cheated on her with a freaky, new age-y weirdo type? Lied about it, put her on his payroll, screwed over his family, shamed people who believed in him, National Enquirer story, is it coming back? Had a baby with the weird chick, lied about it...Okay, well that's the campaign I picked as a winner. I know. I get it. Don't take me to Las Vegas. But, here's the kicker, I loved it!
As I'm sure you can imagine, a cast of many characters were volunteering for the Edwards campaign, a parade of nerds if you will and I most certainly will. The first person I met was Beef, a doughy and unhappy chick who picked me up at the airport with a dented van and a sour attitude. Turns out her name was Beth. I misheard her and called her Beef for the first two days I was in town. The hard fact was that she and I both knew that, Beef, suited her far better than the more cottony, Beth.
Beef dropped me off outside the Edwards campaign office and sped away, spraying icy slush and venom my way. I swung the front door open and it was there that I met a girl named Kelsi.
Kelsi appeared to be a young teen. She was standing in the office, which smelled of mold and peanut butter, and was on the phone trying to locate her lost luggage. (No doubt, filled with Tiger Beats and Belieber fan fiction, I thought meanly.) I was told she and I would be partnered up for the duration. What, in the name of all that is holy, do I have to say to this 8th grader? A lot, as it turns out. Looks can be quite deceiving (See: John Edwards).
As Kelsi and I stomped through the Iowa snow in minus one million degree weather and knocked on doors, we learned a lot about each other. It turns out she was a fascinating chick. She was brilliant and hilarious and the most fun I'd had in a good long time. She was married (legally) and worked as a CSI. What on earth?! I spent the first hours with Kelsi saying things like, "liver temp", "TOD" and "Let's bag the hands so we can check for GSR." She was my very own Veronica Mars - a teen genius, but not really a teen. Here's the thing about being stuck in a small town with a stranger; it can go bad really fast (See: Beef) or super great, super fast (See: Kelsi).
I could go on and on about the ridiculously long hours we worked, the weird fights over campaign stickers, the run-ins with other candidates volunteers, how Beef kept stranding Kelsi and I in the middle of fucking nowhere because she was just plain old revolting. How we raced down miles of snowy highway under a starlit sky so we could hang out at a farmhouse with Elizabeth Edwards. Or about Rocky, the bighearted DJ from Sacramento who quit his job and used the last of his money to fly to Iowa simply because he believed so completely in John Edwards. Or maybe the afternoon we met a lovely woman who invited us into her small, tidy home and asked us to pass on a heartbreaking letter she had written to John Edwards. In it she shyly asked for help for her ailing brother because she had nowhere else to turn.
But what I remember the most is how Kelsi and I spent late nights telling each other confidences that you only share with newfound friends in shabby motel rooms while drinking bad wine.
It would be easy to look back at that campaign and feel cheated. To feel that we gave our time and money to a big fat liar because it's true, that's pretty much what we did. But when I think about my time in Iowa, I remember how much we all believed in something. Our motley group banded together because we had a heartfelt conviction that we were doing something right and there's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.
Not to mention, it's where I had my first taste of an Iowan veggie burger and made friends with girl named Kelsi.