Hangover

I confess. Yesterday I had no inclination whatsoever to crow about the results of the presidential election. After all, it's been twelve years since I picked a winner, and I'm still not exactly sure how to feel about it. I never did buy an Obama bumper sticker for our car, primarily because of my needless sense of sports jinxes. We never had a Clinton/Gore sticker on the car, did we? Of course we didn't have a Kerry/Lieberman sticker either, nor a Dukakis/Bentsen, and so on. I've always been much more relaxed about promoting "The Mystery Spot" than any particular political candidate. The idea of having to drive around for another four to eight years with the back of your car shouting "loser!" is too much for my fragile ego to bear.
Which is precisely the kind of sentiment that my wife was looking for when she turned to me, around the time the polls closed here in California, and wondered aloud if there was a way I could be cynical about this moment in time. Though I am known far and wide for my sarcastic impulses, I didn't have to suppress any dark thoughts Tuesday night. All that talk about hope and change really got to me. I thought of my father, who would have been bawling like a baby, having once served time in Jesse Jackson's original Rainbow Coalition in 1984. I thought about my niece, voting in her first election, and ending up dancing in the streets. Her words: "I have never felt more patriotic or happier to be a Boulderite. I have never been in a mass of hundreds of people, completely devoid of jerks. Everyone was grinning ear to ear, singing and dancing. We carried on for a couple hours, entirely peaceful the whole time. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, so I really wanted all of you to be part of it. Here's to making things a little better one bit at a time."
No less a cynic than Eddie Izzard suggested that this was the true beginning of the third millennium. And for that reason, we should all party like it's 1999.