When I left Chicagoland for Boston, I made an effort to take All My Stuff with me. I figured that this was my Big Grown-up Move, and as such I was no longer entitled to that college-era excuse to store stuff at my parents' houses. (Do I enjoy creating arbitrary life rules for myself and then feeling honor-bound to follow them? Why yes, I apparently do.) In any case, I didn't want to be one of those young adults who flees across the country and saddles her parents with the privilege of storing her massive, beloved, and yet also somehow profoundly unwanted collection of American Girl dolls or replica terracotta soldiers. I sorted and trashed and packed and gave stuff away.
I still left some things behind. So, now that I'm back in town, it's nagging at me again. After visiting my dad's house this past weekend, I took a box home with me. Someday I assume I'll manage to complete the process.
Digging into the box at my new apartment, I discovered my old laptop -- positively ancient by today's standards, the one I used throughout high school and college, from roughly 2003 to 2009. I booted it up to see if there were any old gems on it that I'd neglected to transfer to my newer hard drives. Not surprisingly, I was pretty meticulous in carrying things over: there was exactly one file that I somehow misplaced. It was a Word document named "Election.doc," which was a recording of what I was thinking and feeling on the night of Obama's election in 2008, when I was a college junior one month shy of turning twenty-one.
Despite having this blog up and running at the time of composition, I didn't turn this free-write into a blog post. If I had to guess, I probably found what I wrote to be too embarrassing for public consumption. (I have a bit of an armadillo heart, and I chronically find my own responses to current events insufferable.)
Here it is:
I’m sitting in my apartment at 12:12 a.m., the night of the 2008 presidential election. Logically I should be going to bed, in anticipation of having to get up to register for classes at 6:45 tomorrow morning, but some insightful or narcissistic part of me thinks that someday I might be wondering what being alive tonight was like.
I’ve been more interested in this campaign than any other that I’ve been alive for and aware of. I’m sure history book comparisons between Barack Obama and JFK will be endless, but there’s something about the sense of hope and magic JFK has been said to inspire that resonates with my own experience. I’ve become emotionally invested, becoming righteously offended when someone makes false claims about Obama (did you know he’s a baby killing Muslim?) and horror-stricken at the prospect of the ludicrous Sarah Palin holding a high government office. And in being excited, I was able to share in what was clearly a communal sense of excitement. Usually political discussions I have with my friends or acquaintances wind up ending with some tone of ambivalence or self-conscious detachment, seeing as not caring is the trademark of young people. But lately it’s become cool to care again. Everyone talks passionately about Obama, and it felt like a badge of honor, as corny as it sounds, to have my “I Voted” sticker on today, as opposed to the nerd stamp it might have been in the past.
Speaking of which, I was beyond excited to have this be my first presidential election. I cut out of work at Tommy’s a little early so that I could be sure to get to the polling place (a nearby Methodist church) and be back in time for class at 2:35. It was a beautiful day, so even though there was a shuttle bus running (also, what does it say about us that we’re running a shuttle bus to a polling location less than five blocks away?), I decided to walk the what turned out to be extremely picturesque, leaf-strewn neighborhood that houses the church. Two years ago, when I voted in the congressional race, I went in the evening with my friends to that same church, and both times I’ve been startled by the informality of the experience. I always imagined voting to be a solemn, strictly-monitored occasion (kind of like the DMV), when it turns out to be much more like a county school board meeting. I handed the pleasantly elderly registration woman my voter registration card (no ID necessary, apparently) and was promptly handed a paper ballot and cardboard slab used to put the ballot into a machine. Sitting behind barely shielding, patriotically colored cardboard dividers, I filled in a little bubble next to “OBAMA (Barack),” which made me feel like I was filling out one of my Psychology scan-tron exams (except I got to use a pen). This time, I managed to avoid wandering around the voting room clutching my ballot, wondering where to go. The friendly man standing next to the ballot-insertion device joked with me about the anticlimactic pleasure of pushing the piece of paper through the slot; the number 858 flashed on the digitized screen; I was given my Sticker of Patriotic Pride; and I left. I was so busy thinking about what a casual experience it all was that I took a wrong turn and spent some time wandering a little aimlessly before making my way back to campus (in plenty of time for my class).
I realized throughout the day that at this point, if Obama didn’t win the election, I would assume that some sort of horrible conspiracy plot had been pulled on our electoral system. He’s been at least seven points ahead in the polls for weeks now; a McCain win would stun me in ways I don’t think I’d even comprehend. For the 2004 Bush v. Kerry election, I remember feeling a similar sense of “The American public wouldn’t be so stupid as to elect Bush again—Kerry has to win” but that thought was compromised with the nagging qualifier of “…right?” This time, it would just be unreal. Everyone I know is too invested, too united, and, yes, too hopeful, for Obama not to win.
Still, as I closed at Tommy’s tonight, I turned every TV to CNN or other political stations and listened intently as polls began to close. I was sweeping up when I heard that Obama had taken Ohio (“No republican has ever won without having won Ohio,” announcers told me), and filling silverware when a commentator speculated that even if McCain won even the most remotely plausible states, Obama would still lead. When the polls closed on the west coast and CNN reported Obama as the predicted President Elect, I was alone in a dark restaurant, my closing tasks done, and was able to fully experience an overwhelming feeling of what can most aptly though inadequately be described as joy. A huge smile broke out on my face when I heard the televised roar of the crowd in Grant Park, with shots of people jumping and hugging, inappropriately close-up shots of teary-eyed faces.
I hesitate to call the emotion that swelled in me patriotism. Patriotism is what I feel when I’m watching fireworks on the Fourth of July and “I’m Proud to be an American” begins to play and as the fireworks explode in time with the swelling music I think about how I should be appreciative of my country more often. That is Patriotism, as I've normally understood it: isolated, shallow, emotionally manipulative.
No, what struck me (strikes me) most about how I felt when I realized that no, it wasn’t a dream, and that yes, he’s really going to take office, is that my joy was derived from a sense of community. Part of why I’m so happy Obama was elected was made evident to me later, when I was hanging out with Ian at his house, and the video cameras panned to audience members—black, sure, but also white, gay, old, women, young people, Oprah—and it became so abundantly clear that this man has touched us all, in our differences, and pulled out something same. This is what is so incredible about it. We live in a diverse, fragmented United States currently intent on a downward economic spiral that I have yet to fully understand, and Obama has managed to collectively convince us that we can be held together once we find something real to hold on to.
Obama is going to be president. A black man—a point somehow both not and infinitely significant—is going to be president. George W. Bush is not going to be president anymore. I’m excited for our country, and that is a new experience for me and for a lot of other people celebrating tonight. When I walked back to my apartment tonight I heard the screams and cheers of students on the quad who were so jazzed by Obama’s victory that they ran outside to jump around and hug each other. As I was passing Presser they began to break out in a spontaneous chorus of the national anthem. It’s incredible to me that in this generation of cynicism and irony, a moment like that can still be touching.
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