I reported here last December that I had figured out a different retirement diversion - an endeavor allowing me to "do good" (if you pardon the slight diversion from proper grammar) and "feel good" at the same time. And even make a modest salary.

I would run for public office in my Maryland county, 50 miles northwest of Washington, D.C. I would attempt to win a seat on the seven-member Board of Education, which runs all of the public schools in Frederick County (pop. 220,000).

Well, the primary election was Feb. 12 and I thought I would share my report card with you. I figure I got a C. I didn't quite flunk. I made it through the primary finishing fourth of the 12 candidates in the race. The top six would go on to the November general election. However, at that point only the top three finishers would win a seat. You might argue that since I was only one spot behind, all I would have to do is defeat one of the three candidates who finished ahead of me.

That's what I figured until reality began to glare at me as I sat in the Arizona sun taking a vacation. I had finished way behind the top three, which included two incumbents (incumbents have not lost an election in recent years) and a woman who had years of teaching and volunteering in the schools. I would have had to almost double my votes to win a spot.

Added to that, there was no great discontent with the way the schools were being run, so there was no need to fix something the voters thought wasn't broken. I definitely was not running as a reform candidate. I believed the incumbents were doing a good job.

In fact, the only reason I got into the race was because a local columnist embarrassed me into it when she announced last December that no one, not even the incumbents, had signed up to run. So I figured I had an obligation to pay back all those teachers over the years who had helped me. Unfortunately for me, just about everybody decided to run after that column appeared.

So, as a retiree who did not need the $10,000 yearly salary the job paid and had no plans of starting a political career that would take me to the pinnacles of power, I decided to withdraw. I figured why spend the next eight months campaigning for a job that I had very little chance of winning? Ron Paul would have a better chance of becoming the next president. And I would have to go back to my campaign contributors and plead for more money for this lost cause.

Not that I had a fundraising machine rivaling Hillary's or Barack's. I loaned my campaign $2,000 and raised, perhaps, another $1,000 or so. I hated putting the arm on my friends and relatives. And worse yet, many of my friends and relatives had no trouble ignoring my fundraising letters.

Just about the only relative who contributed was my wife. Most of my kids pretended they didn't even get the letter. A particularly thoughtful sister-in-law not only failed to contribute but volunteered that she considered me an "aging dilettante, who knew nothing about education and wasn't serious." She, herself, had been a teacher of autistic children. I figured that as a mature senior, I did not have to run because my ego would be severely wounded if I withdrew from the race.

I quit and some of the local wiseacres who criticized me for running then called me a quitter. But so what? I have started working as a volunteer in one of the elementary schools, which has a large Hispanic population. I help kindergarteners learn some English words. And I am working with second graders as they study math and reading on computers. Spending my time in the classroom, instead of the boardroom, may be the best thing that has happened out of this adventure.

Who says you can't teach old dog new tricks? If one retirement road gets jammed up, take another.

E-mail Joe Volz at [email protected], or write to 2528 Five Shillings Road, Frederick, MD 21701.

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