Oscillating between excitement and exhaustion while recruiting for the PTA. [Part 1]

I have decided to become a PTA officer at my elementary school for the 2025 school year, and I am currently running around trying to recruit members.

It all started with a childlike feeling: I like the teachers at the elementary school my children attend, and I wanted to be more involved. Haha.

It seems that my active involvement in various community activities has given me a reputation for being proactive, so the current officers approached me and asked, "Why don't you do it next time?" and I got interested. Getting interested so easily is probably both a strength and a weakness of mine.

That said, when it comes to things like this, the people you work with are crucial.

I tried inviting my closest friend, but they are considering becoming an officer for their youngest child's kindergarten next year, so they passed this time. I was wondering who else I could invite when I received a message from a senior welfare commissioner saying,
"I want to get in touch with Mr. S, could you connect us on LINE?"

Mr. S is a fellow dad who invited me to a housing complex fashion show over a year ago.
Ever since I helped him with the video editing for that, we've been the kind of acquaintances who occasionally bump into each other and have a brief chat.

Mr. S is a community activist who, despite being a full-time salaryman, uses his remote work flexibility to help with school commute monitoring and other local roles. His airy, elusive demeanor is mysterious and makes him quite an entertaining person to be around.
He has three children, in the same boy-girl-boy order as my own, and they are two or three years older than mine.

I started typing a LINE message to him with the preamble, "A senior welfare commissioner wants to get in touch with you..." but as I thought about how it had been a while since we last spoke, I thought,
"It's a long shot, but why not invite him to the PTA?" and I decided to make that the first thing I said in my message.

He must have been at work, so it would have been fine if his reply was slow, but he replied immediately.

However, we just kept exchanging irrelevant small talk, and it felt like he was dodging the subject. Just as I was thinking it was probably a lost cause, I brought up the PTA topic again, and

"Mr. Nagahashi, you should be the president. Everyone would be happy if you did."

I received that message and felt annoyed.

…It was probably also due to my own psychological state.
The day before, I had been passionately telling a neighborhood friend, A, about the things I wanted to do if I became a PTA officer, and in the middle of my story, she said, "Tomoko, you should do that!" which had left me feeling exhausted.

A often says "You do it" instead of "Let's do it together," which is why I find her so tiresome.
Well, I wouldn't want to work with someone with that mindset anyway.

and the moment I thought I should look for someone else,

came the reply.

Wait... seriously!?
I must have had a complicated expression on my face—like I was about to grin, but was still annoyed.
But I was happy nonetheless.

And so, with one member decided for the time being, things started moving.

Continuing to [Part 2].