How to be Mayor of AmeriTowne

“What childhood dream of yours was crushed?” He asks me. A deep question for a Monday night, but I’ll play ball. The air is humid with May rain and my water glass is sweating.

I pause, and take a sip out of the slippery glass, sifting through the mental attic of early ambitions, still glittery with aspiration: detective, pop star, Harriet the Spy. I land on a desire that sends ripples across my skin.

“Don’t laugh.”

“I won’t.”

“I’m serious!”

“I won’t!”

“…Okay. I wanted to be mayor.”

He laughs. “Like, of a city?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Probably Denver.” I’m laughing now, too. 

Look, it’s not an unrealistic dream to have. Mayors are real people. (27% of U.S. mayors are women, which is not nearly enough, but I’ll take it.)

It’s funny because even back then, I was a Serious kid. And because it’s so far off from what I do now.

But for what it’s worth, I wasn’t completely unqualified.

I’ve always been fascinated by the human experience. While my sisters played outside, I preferred the company of imaginary townspeople. I’d sit in my grandparents' basement, writing fake newspapers in colored pencils (The Lewis Times) complete with fictional outlaws, elaborate headlines, and dramatic weather reports. I rolled them up and circulated them through the house like a one-girl New York Times. I think the delivery was half the fun for me - I developed an infatuation with newsboy hats from Limited Too and wore them everywhere.

I didn’t think anything could top writing stories, until I discovered you could physically insert yourself into them. You could be the story itself. Not only that, but other kids thought it was fun and completely normal to wear costumes all day, too. Welcome to theatre, baby.

My acting debut was as the plot-critical character of Princess #2 in a community production of Beauty and the Beast. I had three lines, all performed with precise intensity. My grandmother made my costume by hand - forest green with intricately stitched argyle sleeves. After that, it was over for me. Being on stage felt like home.

It wasn’t until fifth grade that I discovered an avenue that combined my love for the news and performance into one, glorious path.

Enter: AmeriTowne.

If you grew up in Colorado, you may already understand the power of this place. For the uninitiated, AmeriTowne was a miniature, meticulously designed fake town that could rival a Nathan Fielder set - complete with a bank, a post office, a market, even a news station - meant to teach kids how society functions. Disneyland meets C-SPAN. You applied for jobs in advance, and a mayor was pre-elected by their peers. We were given checkbooks and credit cards and responsibilities. Capitalism & community on a micro scale. 

Initially, I wanted to be a news anchor. It made sense: I liked information, I enjoyed attention, and I had strong opinions about fonts. But something deeper tugged at me - something structural, something foundational. I didn’t just want to report on the town. I wanted to shape it.

And thus began my campaign as Mayor Lewis. 

I can’t tell you what my platform was, but I remember the joy of hearing that I won. I had to prepare a speech when we arrived at the town. My dad, a former speechwriter for a Senator, sprang into action. Every afternoon after school, we workshopped my speech. His excitement was one notch below his level of enthusiasm for the Science Fair, which, in our house, were full-scale NASA experiments.

When the big day arrived, I wore a blazer on top of my school uniform and stood at the front of my little town, delivering my speech. I remember an employee who worked there told my teacher that my speech was pretty hardcore, and that most kids didn’t take the speech that seriously. I took that as a sign of greatness.

After my speech, I spent the morning signing business licenses - official-looking papers that made me feel, briefly, like I understood how the world worked. Once I finished, I asked the AmeriTowne staff what else I should do. “I don’t know. Walk around, I guess,” they shrugged.

So I decided to go on tour. I offered affirmations. “Great job with those envelopes!” “Nice filing!” I stopped by to see my little sister B, who was working as a photojournalist at the news station. She gave me a crash course in how the cameras worked and “offered” to film me in action as part of her assignment. (When I told her I was writing about this, she quickly corrected the record: I commandeered her camera access and basically turned her into my PR team, persuading her to make a documentary about my five-hour mayoral reign: “I couldn’t even cash a check because I was filming you shaking hands.” Sorry, B. To her credit, she is incredible with a camera. And an unbelievably patient sister.)

Power trip aside, it was the best day of my entire life. Even B admitted: “You loved being mayor. It was your whole personality.”

And she was right. It wasn’t just fun, it lit something in me. A reverence for public service. An awe for systems, for the invisible gears that make a community run. I felt the heartbeat of something shared. Something civic.

I remember thinking: This is it. This is everything. I left that day feeling like I could really do this someday.

Alas, my mayoral dreams ended there. Not because anyone told me I couldn’t - which, heartbreakingly, is how so many dreams die - but because life took me elsewhere. At the time, I was swept up in after-school rehearsals and writing poetry in notebook margins. I had chosen art. Or maybe art chose me.

Either way, there wasn’t a lot of societal encouragement to be artistic and political. I wasn’t shown a world where both could easily co-exist. The early 2000s weren’t exactly generous to artists with strong opinions. I vividly remember people smashing Dixie Chicks CDs in the King Soopers parking lot in protest of their protest. The message was clear: if you’re creative, stay in your lane. 

So I tucked the part of me that loved public service into a corner. Like so many girls with big ideas and soft hearts, I tried to be palatable. Aimable. Marketable. 

But some dreams are patient. They mature. They shed layers of ego and evolve into something wiser. Ambition distills into service.

I’ve found my way back to government in different ways. I read policy reports. I support causes that move me. I speak out when something feels wrong. I think freedom is the most essential thing we have - not the bald eagle bumper sticker kind - but the kind that allows people to exist without fear. Freedom as the right to speak. Freedom as mutual care. Freedom as the safety to be seen.

I don’t need to be a mayor to protect that kind of freedom, because real change comes from within. I believe that before we can govern cities or systems or nations, we must first learn how to govern ourselves.

We must become engaged citizens of our own inner world - of our thoughts, our habits, our capacity to love. Every choice we make is a “vote” for the person we want to be and the world we want to live in.

We can choose to tell the truth, or we can choose to stay silent. We can choose to question what we're told, or we can nod along. We can choose to witness reality, or we can look away.

We can choose to find the light, or we can sit in the dark.

The choice is ours. 

On behalf on Mayor Lewis, we think you’re doing a great job! We hope you choose the light. We hope you choose freedom. 🕊️

Don't worry, it's still in business!!

US Capitol In Evening / Nan Venhuizen