What happened here Tuesday night
When I got home from work, Mom was making dinner. She immediately asked me if I had voted. I pulled open my coat to show my "I voted" sticker. She looked disappointed. I told her that I would take her up there after dinner so she could vote.
Well, after dinner we went down to her room and turned on the TV. The first few polls in the east coast area were closing, and they were projecting McSame as the winner in a few of the southern states.
Mom jumps up and says "That's it! I gotta go vote, NOW!" First off, I LOVE that seeing returns from states so far away got her so fired up. I grabbed my jacket, and Alex asked if he could come along. He then pointed out that he would be voting to RE-ELECT Obama in the next election.
This gave me a moment of pause. First off, Alex is already projecting the winner, and second, holy crap, he's going to be old enough in 4 years to vote. Wow, as if I didn't feel old enough already!
I took Alex along, happy that he was so enthused about the process. While mom was voting I was showing Alex around and we stood back and watched as some people came in and needed to register (I told him that he would not have that problem, he would be registered beforehand). He got to see a ballot and I showed him how to fill it out (no, I didn't show him WHO to vote for, I showed him how to fill in the spots, make the marks, hanging chads and all that shit)
When mom was done, we headed back home, and planted ourselves in front of the TV... Alex was in and out all night.
He asked that we holler for him if anything 'big' happened. When Obama won Pennsylvania, we hollered and he came running.
"So what's the score?" And he knew that the 'magic' number was 270.
We hollered again every time Obama flipped a red state, and he came running "What's the score now?"
He happened to be in the room at 10 pm. When it was announced.
"Barack Obama is the projected winner. Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States".
My son said "Yes!" and walked away.
I was impressed and proud of his interest and sense of civic duty. He may screw up and piss me off at times, but he WILL be a registered Democrat.
I may not be a perfect parent, but at least I have that.
Between the historic election and the intensity with which Alex was involved in an election that he wasn't even able to take part in, I was in awe for the rest of the evening.
4 comments:
Good to here your young son was so enthused. And, we did it!! I'm still a little elated by it all.
It's good to get kids involved in what's going on in the world at such a young age. I remember going to the OLD church house to vote with my parents when I was a kid. I missed getting to vote when I turned 18 by 2 weeks. Election was at the beginning of Nov and my b-day is the 18th. I was SO upset I had to wait 4 more years, well actually 2 since our governor is in between the president election.
I hope the "change" we hear is coming will be positive and rescue this crises we are in.
We held a mock election at school and it was nice to see so many young kids (2nd and 3rd graders) excited about the whole election process. When asked about the candidates some were parroting back what they'd heard at home and others seemed to have an actual opinion of their own. It gives hope that maybe just maybe the next generation isn't so far down the crapper just yet.
Voting for me this year was like picking the least of two evils. I hope that Obama can bring the change he promised (not sure how much I believe that though) but it was just great to see him give himself an out by saying in his acceptance speech "...it might not happen in the next four years...". Yep, can't wait to see what changes are coming with that kind of an attitude.
I heard that too, Steff, but I took it a different way, I guess. I think he's being realistic with his goals... his first priority must be to clean up the bush-mess that he's walking into. God only knows how long that will take.
I look at it like walking into a house that needs some remodeling but the previous owners trashed it before they left. The first thing you can do, before you tear up the stained carpet and replace drafty windows is to clean up the pizza boxes and beer cans, empty the trash and mop the floor.
I hope it doesn't take Obama too long to clean up after the previous tenants, but I'm prepared to back him while he's mopping and vacuuming...
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