Could I have been queen for a day?

I thought about running, I really did.

I could have rejected my cynicism long enough to… I thought about running, I really did.

I could have rejected my cynicism long enough to wear a tiara on a riverboat cruise. I could have smiled and waved with the best of them. I would have made a great queen.

The final Homecoming of my undergraduate career has come and gone, and it passed me by – or rather, I brushed past it. I guess when I tell my grandkids about it later, I’ll say I was too busy answering lewd questions from horny college kids – and, oh yeah, doing schoolwork – to purport myself as social royalty to a campus of thousands.

Several weeks ago, I got the notion to run. I figured I would have a respectable chance, despite my lack of Greek affiliation or loads of disposable cash to spend on an advertising campaign, or, ya know, cleavage. I think I would have run on the slightly ironic, I’m-less-like-Barbie-and-more-like-Daria ticket. Every year, a few people go for this tack, and every once in a while, it works.

I’ve spent a lot of time knocking traditions and arbitrary contests like the Homecoming race, but I guess I’ve gotten soft and sentimental in my old age. I’ll be leaving Pitt in April, and Pitt’s been good to me. It’s been a long, strange trip – one I wasn’t sure I’d ever complete. Now the end is in view, and I guess I’m heaving a sigh – a sigh of relief, a sigh of contentment, a sigh of melancholy at the end of an era. It would have been nice, I suppose, to leave with a big thumbs-up.

Realistically, I couldn’t have handled the stress of running. I mean: Do I really want to see my mug leering back at me from every telephone pole? Do I want to try dazzling freshmen out in the Ashtray for a whole afternoon? Do I really want thousands of people to know my name?

Yes! Yes, yes yes!

Oh god, yes! Microcelebrity is a potent drug, and upping the dosage might have been just what the doctor ordered to feed my head. I could have had it all! An unspecified number of years – what, you thought I’d tell? – spent mocking the institution, followed by the ultimate hipster irony – I could have been the cheerleaders in the Smells Like Teen Spirit video.

Except that’s bull. It wouldn’t have been ironic. It wouldn’t have been hip or even a statement. It would have been the lonely girl from the high school dance finally getting the limelight, and not having blood dumped on her. It would have been a lot of fun.

I guess I have a fair degree of visibility and maybe even some charisma. Honestly, I would have stood a chance, but now I’ll never know.

Maybe that’s how I wanted it. Maybe I just didn’t have the stones to put myself out there, to submit to the public whims of beauty and acceptability. It’s a lot easier to sit on the sidelines and sneer when someone else takes a nosedive. It takes very little effort to draw a mustache on a poster of some anonymous blonde. It’s easy to reduce the folks on the posters to pretty heads and witty slogans, but they’re all people who thought they could be the Most Special Guy or Girl, even just for a moment.

Can you name last year’s King or Queen? I bet you can’t – and that’s fine. It’s a silly contest and it means very little in the grand scheme of things. Detractors say it’s nothing but a contest based on pretty faces and lollipop distribution schemes, and they are right.

But to two people every year, it’s huge. And I will never be one of those people.

Melissa Meinzer’s pretty sure she couldn’t have handled defeat, anyway. E-mail her at mmeinzer@pittnews.com.