7:37 a.m. - 2016-06-13
I didn't get it until I got it.
On Saturday I was at Eastern Market, it was hot, I was discouraged (sales at the market have been in the toilet lately and the weather is not helping with wind and rain). I pull my car up to load and Pete, who helps people hustle their stuff in and out of their cars, says 'You're going to have to wait a minute. Bill Clinton is in front of your tent'.
I thought i was having heatstroke and I asked him to repeat himself. "Bill Clinton. He's here".
I don't even think I locked my car. I flew over to my set up and saw a (shorter than I would have thought) full head of white hair mostly obscured by someone wearing a cheese head hat with a picture of Trump taped to it (because: DC).

And then it happened. I got weirdly emotional. I have seen the film of women crying over the assassination of Kennedy and thought "why are they crying for him? it's not like they know him" but right then I totally got it. I began to tear up remembering the first time I cast a ballot for president. In 1992. I was in college, some road show had rolled into Fisher Auditorium and I was working as crew and had used my lunch break to head across campus to cast my vote.
I walked in, excited to finally see inside a curtained booth that I had seen my parents enter so many times when they went to vote. And I was handed a paper ballot, a #2 pencil and directed to a partition.
A partition? Where was my booth? Where were the levers with the satisfying ker-CHUNK?
Nope. No more. Fill in the bubble.
And so I did. I filled in the bubble for Bill Clinton....and probably any other democratic candidate on the bill not really aware of the other political races of Indiana, Pennsylvania at the time; and headed back to work.
I so clearly remember everything about that day, the building, how I felt after voting, how I felt when it was announced he won. The aggravation I felt towards my idiot roommate for voting for Perot.
So maybe I was tearing up for my youthful idealism. Maybe I was tearing up because there was something of a reunion honoring Patrick that very day at IUP that I was unable to attend. Maybe I teared up because despite all of his flaws, I loved Bill as a president. I moved to DC for the last two years of his presidency and the arts were thriving. Maybe I teared up because I am genuinely afraid of having to say 'president drumpf' (I can't even capitalize that).
I did not join the throng in clamoring for pictures. I was hot and tired and I smelled like a barnyard. And besides, he'll be around a lot soon as the First Gentleman of the United States.

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