This morning, the wife and I (with the boy in tow) went to our local polling place. It's usually empty except for the sleepy and bored pollworkers who all live in my neighborhood. This morning, however, there were at least 30 people in a line that stretched out the door.
The boy has been sick the last couple of days and was not entirely happy with having to wait for nearly an hour for us to vote for Barack Obama but he was nice enough to not throw a fit or have a meltdown.
My wife went to her machine right before me. And I had the boy come with me to the touchscreen. He remembered that we had to put the white card into the machine and was excited to do that. I was delighted that he initiated what I had thought I might have to trick him into doing or cajol him into doing.
After we put the card in that starts the touchscreen up, I whispered in his ear and asked him to do me a favor and touch that little box right there where it says Barack Obama. He did and when he saw the X appear in the box, he was a little delighted and wanted to help me finish out the whole thing.
I let him.
When we got out to the car, before I put him in and strapped him down, I knelt down and told him, "Buddy, you may not understand what I'm about to tell you but you will someday. When you were filling in that box with your finger, you did something very important. And someday, when you're a little older, you'll understand that you were part of history."
He just looked at me and said, "Ok, daddy, can I get in the car now?"
Not exactly a Hallmark moment but I hoped it was more than a lot of dads would think to do or have the opportunity to do.
In all my life, I can think of only two historic events that had to do with my country and were overwhelmingly positive. That is, I can only think of two before tonight.
The first would be the moon landing. That was July, 1969 and I was about to turn four. I have no remembrance of it per se but it was in my lifetime.
The second would be the Berlin Wall coming down. That was in November of 1989. At that time, I had no inkling of what that meant but I remember listening to Tom Brokaw describing it and feeling like it was a good thing.
Now, I can add November, 2008 to that list. That was when an African-American, for the first time in our nation's history, was elected President of the United States.
At this late hour, it is difficult to encompass the enormity of the event with a simple blog post. Suffice to say, I'm proud of our country for having taken the leap. I'm proud to have cast my vote for Obama after supporting him for the last few months.
Now, two or three generations have something positive with which to define themselves as Americans. For the two positive historical events prior to tonight they can be matched, even outstripped by the tragedies of the dual assassinations of MLK and RFK, the Nixon resignation, the Iranian hostage situation, numerous scandals in Washington, OJ, Challenger and 9.11.
This puts one in the positive column for sure.
