Spring Break
Column: Hot off the Press
Barack fever
Brenna McCabe
Issue date: 1/22/09 Section: Editorial/Opinion
01/22/09 - On Jan. 20, I sleepily glanced up at the Washington Monument from beneath four layers of clothes, a hat, a scarf, a blanket and two pairs of socks. It was 6:30 a.m. and the image of my lifeless body, white from hypothermia, was a recurring thought. The temperature was well below freezing and while I had a hand-warmer and a blanket to wrap around me, it was only an hour before my body was numb.
But once I passed the monument and entered the National Mall, a scene that I had never been able to fathom appeared before me, and suddenly my stiff limbs weren't as important anymore. There were at least 500,000 people standing in front of me, forming a side of Obama Nation that I'd never quite grasped. Even when the election results were announced and everyone around me celebrated, I never thought I would experience something like this.
My friends and I set up camp right in the middle of the mall where we could get a decent view of the Capitol. By 10 a.m., the strangers that had filtered in around us were no longer random people in a crowd. We were all here for the same reason, and while one might think it's easy to feel small in a crowd of one million, that day we all felt we were fully meant to be a part of the profound textbook moment when Obama took the oath.
Someone who I'd just met the day before the inauguration said something to me then that I thought I could relate to. He said he wished he could just find an adult who lived through key points in history and ask him or her how the inauguration of Barack Obama seemed to fit into it all. Was it really the experience that everyone was building it up to be?
"I am fully jealous of the people who were college students during the Vietnam War," he said. In a way, I was, too. It was the age of protest, when the citizens of this country took life by the horns and utilized their freedoms to their ultimate potential.
Vietnam veterans might not agree-the war was a time of turmoil, confusion and frustration with the United States government. Some turn away in disgust at the thought and explain that it should never have happened in the first place.
But once I passed the monument and entered the National Mall, a scene that I had never been able to fathom appeared before me, and suddenly my stiff limbs weren't as important anymore. There were at least 500,000 people standing in front of me, forming a side of Obama Nation that I'd never quite grasped. Even when the election results were announced and everyone around me celebrated, I never thought I would experience something like this.
My friends and I set up camp right in the middle of the mall where we could get a decent view of the Capitol. By 10 a.m., the strangers that had filtered in around us were no longer random people in a crowd. We were all here for the same reason, and while one might think it's easy to feel small in a crowd of one million, that day we all felt we were fully meant to be a part of the profound textbook moment when Obama took the oath.
Someone who I'd just met the day before the inauguration said something to me then that I thought I could relate to. He said he wished he could just find an adult who lived through key points in history and ask him or her how the inauguration of Barack Obama seemed to fit into it all. Was it really the experience that everyone was building it up to be?
"I am fully jealous of the people who were college students during the Vietnam War," he said. In a way, I was, too. It was the age of protest, when the citizens of this country took life by the horns and utilized their freedoms to their ultimate potential.
Vietnam veterans might not agree-the war was a time of turmoil, confusion and frustration with the United States government. Some turn away in disgust at the thought and explain that it should never have happened in the first place.
