A Great Day In American History

November 4, 2008.  We awoke to the most awful sound in the world, yes the alarm clock. However, instead of hitting the snooze until we leave ourselves with only 10 minutes to get to class, we got out of bed excited to do our civic duty (well to some extent) and go vote!  We walked out of our front door and halfway down our street to our polling location.  At 7am the line was very long!  To our surprise it moved fairly quickly, and within ~ 30 minutes we were holding our ballots.  For the first time I had educated myself on all the issues on our ballot instead of just making a guess or a quick judgment, so it didn't take me very long to fill out.  I did however check my presidential selection about 5 times just to make sure I filled in the little bubble nest to Obama's name!  After turning in my ballot I waited outside for Peter for another 5 or so minutes. I was beginning to wonder what was taking him so long, but when he found me he said he was double checking to make sure he selected Obama as well!  We then continued home with big smiles on our faces, went back to sleep, then finally went to class.

We both got home around 6-6:30pm and were excited to have our election party (just Peter and I, the TV, and good food)!  We were prepared to stay up as long as it took to find out the results.  But, forgetting what time zone we were in, we were wondering why at around 7pm no polls were in and the news hadn't really started their coverage.  Well, apparently we're not in Utah anymore, so the evening got started later than we were used to!  Being impatient, we decided to walk to the store and get ingredients to make tacos and guacamole.  Once we returned, the east coast had started reporting.  Massachusetts went to Obama...Yay! For the first time our votes counted!!!  How exciting!  For a moment we both had the feeling that wow, democracy can work after all!  Not only did Obama win Massachusetts, but every issue and person we voted for won, except Issue # 2: decriminalizing marijuana.  We voted no, but by close to a 70-30 split, the issue passed.  Oh well, you can't have it all!  Anyway, as the evening continues, we are getting more hopeful and it's getting more exciting.  At around 10:55pm I decide to put the food away and clean up and Peter says "they're announcing Obama as President!"  What!! It's only 11pm!!!  Having been crushed in both the 2000 and 2004 elections, I was skeptical to get to excited, but this time it was for real.  

After McCain's speech, which I was very impressed with by the way, we were waiting for Obama's speech.  At one point Peter said "mute the TV", so I did, and out our window (which is open by the way even though it's cold outside because we have a mystery smell...don't ask because we don't know!) we heard tons of people chanting "Obama".  Peter in his pj's was so curious so he ran outside to see what was going on while I stayed glued to the TV not wanting to miss the speech.  He comes back saying that there were extremely large groups of people walking down our street headed who knows where.  Well, anyway, Obama then came on and gave his speech.  I'm going to sound like an emotional nerd but I almost cried several times, but held it back!  I would encourage anyone who has not watched his speech to go online and watch it.  I have never felt so inspired by a politician in my life and I really do feel grateful to be a part of this time in American history.

The main point of blogging about this night is this section.  After Obama's speech, we saw on the local news that there were crowds of people near our apt, in the reflection pool that is in our photo album of boston!  So we changed out of "comfy clothes" and ran outside to the pool.  There were people everywhere and there was an indescribable electricity in the air.  Every person we passed was smiling, cheering, yelling Obama's name and clearly excited!  Along Massachusetts Avenue (a main through street separating our street from the reflection pool) people were honking car horns, some to mimic the slogan "yes we can" or "O-bam-a" (depending on how you interpret horn talk), people were hanging out of car windows yelling and cheering, people were singing, music students from a nearby music college were making their own little make-shift marching bands, and overall it was madness!  We made it to the reflection pool where people were wading in the pool, some people were trying to get the crowds attention and make speeches, everyone was chanting "Obama", "yes we can", "yes we did", the pledge of allegiance was said, the national anthem was sung, and again, madness!  There were cops around but they were standing back letting people have a good time, however we did smell pot, lots of it.  Apparently some people decided to take immediate advantage of the new law that passed.  We think they were having their own little celebration of sorts.

We stayed for about 15 minutes and decided to go home, along our way passing more excited people.  All I could could think about on the walk home was, wow.  This is a day that I am going to remember forever, and this is something that we will share with our children and say we were there, we were a part of this moment in history.  I think that is amazing.