I am considering exactly how best to word a thank-you note to Arnold Schwarzenegger for keeping his mouth shut even when he couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Not that I approve – I surely don’t, but whether or not I approve is immaterial. It’s just that, had Arnold not so egregiously lied, I wouldn’t have met some of the dearest people in my life. I wouldn’t have had lunch with those dear people today. A whole series of “what ifs” different from the ones I have lived might have followed that one “what if” – had Arnold Schwarzenegger told the truth.

Talk show callers sputter in outrage and pundits continue thumb-sucking analysis of where the bounds of privacy should be drawn in a politician’s life (can we all agree that raping a chambermaid is not okay?) Whatever. I’m with the political analysts who conclude that even in blue-state California, voters would not have chosen Arnold Schwarzenegger to be Governor had they known about his love-child. They probably would have let my former boss, Governor Gray Davis, stay in office instead.

My coworkers and I wouldn’t have stood outside the State Capitol, futilely waving “don’t do to California what you did to those women,“ signs, after the LA Times’ exhaustive reporting about the dozen or so women who’d accused Arnold of groping and harassment on the job. We wouldn’t have been out of our own jobs, “swept clean” by the man who vowed to “blow up the boxes” of government in Sacramento. (For the record, in two terms no boxes were blown up. Nothing shrank, certainly not Arnold’s ego, as the state’s deficit ballooned to $26 billion.)

In August 2003, before all the Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes started in earnest, I was at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, camping on the last night of a spectacular rafting trip. Because I only had a week off from work, I planned to hike out of the canyon by myself the next morning and another woman named Ann would hike down, taking my place with the group for the remainder of the 18-day trip. Unfortunately, the other Ann brought with her a San Francisco Chronicle, the first news we’d seen in seven days. “Recall Set for October 7,” read the banner headline. I considered staying in the canyon. Why wake up at 4 a.m. for the most grueling hike of my life, when I could imagine the nightmare back home? But I did hike, and then for six weeks I walked precincts: “No on the Recall!”

People thought Gray Davis was dull– no SAG card for him — but he was a straight arrow kind of guy. No boozing, no immoderation in anything, except seeking reelection. No one ever even hinted at him being a womanizer. When the Enron-engineered energy crisis hit, at the same time as the dot-com bust, Rep. Darrell Issa thought Davis weak enough to pump some of his car alarm fortune into the cockamamie recall election idea (“Step AWAY from the car! And Vote for Darrell Issa!”). No one took it very seriously. Then Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the race. Celebrity, money, Hollywood, Cinderella all in one. We could feel our doom, and I planned a “comfort and consolation party” for the night of the election. About two minutes after the polls closed, the announcement came.

The man who’d just a year earlier been reelected by a comfortable margin– giving his staffers the confidence to buy their first homes, start families, feel settled – now was out, and so were we. We’d worked our assess off for five years, full of hope for better schools and cleaner air and all the other things we believed were possible to achieve. That night we were dumbstruck, and scared. The old Prince song, “Money Don’t Matter” blasted from my stereo and we drank wine and vodka and ate mac and cheese. Soon, we’d scatter. Some would be unemployed for many stressful months, while others would find soft landings soon.

Things worked out eventually, as things do. California was certainly no better off, though some of the tearful souls at my mac ‘n cheese party wound up being so.

I was “rescued” by the state superintendent of schools, the nicest boss there ever was, and my co-workers from his office became and remain close friends. Many on Davis’ old team also stay in touch, bonded by the surreal experience of getting the shaft from a bodybuilding action hero-turned governor.

Today, a few of us had lunch to catch up. It was wonderful to see everyone, happy in new phases of their lives. We spent only a couple of minutes talking about Arnold and the News. We felt sorry for Maria. Sorrier for our state. We did acknowledge, though, that if it weren’t for Arnold and his lies, we might not be enjoying friendship over lunch. So maybe a thank-you is in order, from a few survivors of an election we’d rather not recall.