I am still unsure about what or how I feel. And I don't think I'm alone. I've read many articles and blog posts and most seem to have an air of wonderment or disbelief about them. It's like we've all been waiting for Christmas or a birthday but not really sure that there will be a Christmas or birthday this year. Then, after the interminable waiting, it happens and then we got exactly what we wanted and we go, "Damn, what now?"
Some of my family members and friends and I left work and hurried up to a local bar that is famous for being headquarters for fans attending the local college football games. On game days it is so crowded that you can not move inside. Yesterday was the same thing. Similar fervor but a different vibe. No raucous cheers or derisive comments about the other team (except when Bush was shown on TV) but a reverential expectation and hundreds of people experiencing their own special Christmas morning moment.
We managed to procure a spot in front of a big screen but so close that I practically had to lie on the ground and look up to watch. Unfortunately, that put us close to the local reporters who had been dispatched to find idiots to interview and because they could see the effect that the occasion had on me, one chose to interview me after the inaugural speech. Now, I am a blubbering wuss of the first order. I tear up watching sporting events when something even moderately dramatic happens, in movies when the dog dies or when the good guys get loyal to each other and ride into town to dispatch the bad guys or almost any other time when most people wouldn't. This manifests itself by me being unable to speak without choking up. So, when the magnitude of the moment and the oratorical brilliance of the speech was still resonating with me, a beautiful female reporter sticks a microphone in my face and says, "This seemed to be emotional for you. Why was that?"
Well, that did it. I tried to think of something erudite and pithy to say. All I could do was to stand there sobbing with snot running out of my nose.
What I would have liked to have said was our country had experienced hundreds of years of racial divide and this was a major step in closing the divide, that the country had experienced 8 years of criminal, incompetent leadership and this was huge in reversing that, that as an old man that was raised in the rural south, with all its inherent bias, this was a cleansing event for me, but all I did was let mucous run out of my nose.
What a glorious day!
