Tuesday, January 20, 2009

I Never Thought That Would Happen

I'm 24, just for the record. That's five presidents and four inaugurations I've lived through. Honestly, I have such a complete lack of interest in all things political and even more so in american politics I had to look that up. I couldn't have named any one of those men beyond Clinton and Bush and I probably couldn't have put them in chronological order. And I have never watched an inauguration, ever.
Today that changed.
I sat and watched the whole thing. I listened to the swearing in and the speeches. Everything. For the first time in my whole life I had a reason to.
The last eight years have been a constant reminder of just how much everything that goes on next door impacts us. It's dragged us down in more ways than I care to count, pulled us in to conflicts and been a weight on the shoulders of all of us. It's something I had never really felt before. So it would be a lie to say that my hopes aren't high, but it would be a bigger lie to say that my concern isn't higher.
But for now I'm going to concentrate on being hopeful. Hang on to the good feeling while I can, you know?



**On a completely unrelated note, let me take a second and say sorry for missing both MLK day AND Edgar Allan Poe's birthday. I spent all day yesterday being really, really, really sick and wasn't in any condition to do much of anything, including posting.

5 comments:

Gwenhwyfar said...

Five without repeats, but that would have been my guess as well. (Wait... not true, I wasn't totally sure it was Bush, Clinton, Bush - although it is fitting that Clinton got stuck in the middle of all that Bush...)

Robin said...

Hope is all we have...and vodka.

Gwenhwyfar said...

And coffee, let's not forget coffee.

Janna said...

I usually despise politics, but I watched the inauguration too.

My overriding thought was "How can there possibly be enough porta-potties for everyone??"

I wonder how many people ended up peeing on the sidewalk/lawns/fellow citizens.

The media never seems to ask these kinds of questions.

Gwenhwyfar said...

See? This is a perfect example of why I love you. hahahaha...
My overriding thought? "If you're going to sing 'My country, 'tis of thee' you really shouldn't put such a dramatic pause between the 'cunt' and the 'ree'."
(also, why is my spell check thingy telling me the cunt isn't a word?)