INAUGURATION DAY

I.
Me

11:00 AM

I am one of the lucky ones.
As I walk down the hall, my footsteps echo over the emptiness,
and through every window and door
I can see my peers concentrating on exams.

I have Driver's Ed this block and we took our exam last week.
So I am one of the lucky ones, who is able to focus on more important things
than square roots
and metaphors
names, dates, theories and equations, all of which mean little to me
or to any of us.

I am one of the lucky ones who can focus on what is important
to me.

I show my pass to the hall monitoring teacher, and she waves me through with a finger to her lips and a cock of her head, warning me to be quiet as I make my way down the hall. What noise am I going to make? What could I possibly do right now, by myself, while everyone else is working, that would cause a disturbance? And why would I want to? Why would I want to blow this? I am one of the lucky ones.

I arrive in the horticulture room, and it is nearly empty. There is the horticulture teacher, who I have never spoken to before in my life, my english teacher and my art teacher. These are the two teachers who love me best, so neither of them check me for a pass.

"Pull up a chair," they say.

And so I do. I pull up a chair to watch history play out before my eyes.

God, I'm lucky.

II.
The Disgrace

11:15 AM

A long time ago, he stopped being such a failure in our eyes. He stopped being a subject of dinnertime debates and classroom discussions. He was no longer someone we got riled up about, cursing his name and all his mistakes. He became a simple, head shaking joke. A disgrace. A "thank god that's almost over".

When I see him walking down that hall, it almost surprises me that he can stand so tall. It strikes me as odd that he can walk upright and alert, without crumbling away into a pile of rubble with every step he takes, until eventually there is nothing left to mock or even notice.

I don't hate him, no. I'm not one of those people who still gets upset at the mention of his name. I moved past that long ago.

He doesn't make me furious, on the contrary he breaks my heart. With all the power he was given and all the resources and all the opportunity, he became...this. He wasted it all away and got nothing in return. I look at him and I see all the suffering he has caused, all the personally emotional and physical anguish and I still don't hate him. I just shake my head.

He reaches the door leading out to the podium, out to the light and the hundreds of thousands of people. He doesn't hesitate, just gives the security woman a little eyebrow raise and a highfive. I wonder if they are friends. I wonder if he has walked through many a door with her standing by, and now, leaving his beautiful house and beautiful lifestyle and walking away from the world at his feet, what he's really going to miss is that nice smiling security woman.

He is human, not dust.

Leaving all this behind, he takes a highfive for the road.

"Presenting the outgoing president, the honorable George Walker Bush."

Honorable. He likes that.

And with that, he steps out into the light.

III.
Patriots

12:10 AM

"God, he looks so nervous," the girl at the end of the row says.

"Really?" comments the girl next to her, with a snap of her gum. "I think he looks pretty chill."

The room is full to the brim at this point, threatening to overflow out into the parking lot. I am near the front of the group, one of the lucky seated ones, surrounded by peers and teachers who are crammed into this room against every wall. We have all been waiting for this moment, when our new president would be presented to us. We went along with my english teacher's coaxings to applaud every ex-president as they walked down the carpeted stairs into the freezing wide open. Everyone except The Disgrace of course. Applauding him would be to support a flawed system, and that would be betraying our country. It's amazing how patriotic everyone seems to suddenly get when they have hope. Blank slate, new president. New life. New you.

That reverend yells a bit too loud, and says the names of those little girls in a way that makes everyone in the room giggle uncomfortably. I don't understand why God is brought into this anyways. What does God have to do with our government? And what if I don't believe? What if I support my president but not your God? Does that make me unpatriotic?

The time has come to swear him in. That rickety old man stands there with a bible (there they go with religion again), bracing himself against the fourteen degree breeze.

"Please stand," the announcer booms, "For the innauguration of president elect Barack Hussein Obama."

"I think we should stand," my english teacher says.

And so we do. Each and every one of us.

I have never put my hand over my heart for the national anthem. Does that count as betraying my country? Is it wrong that I have never felt the urge to salute a song about war? I have never felt that this symbolizes our country very well, so at hockey games I have always picked the right moment to tie my shoe. Am I a traitor?

Today, standing in the horticulture room of my high school and staring into the glare of an old TV, I am tempted to put my hand over my heart, or salute, or do something. I want to honor my country in a way that I never have before. Is that wrong?

IV.

I am frozen in this place
in time and in space,
my eyes and my heart and my mind and my spirit all glued to a TV.

For once, this is encouraged.

I know that all over the nation, there are millions more people feeling the exact same way that I do.

For once, this does not make me feel insignificant.

For once, I feel like it's okay that I feel the same, I AM the same as everyone else.

"As the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself," Obama says confidently, and these words fill my mind and the space around me and as they do, I feel them constituting the entirety of my ever-shrinking world and I am at peace.

V.
Yes We Did.

12:30 PM

My eyes meet those of everyone around me, one at a time.

Some of them hug me, some of them I have never seen before.

But for once, I can see my own reflection in the eyes of everyone in my life, whether I am important to them or they to me or neither. For the first time, I feel proud of my place not only in my school or my community or my family, but in my world. This wasn't just the victory of a democrat, or the victory of a black man or a victory of one side of yet another endless political battle.

This was the victory of humanity, and common interest, and common ideals, and faith.

Not of a higher power, no. This was a victory of faith in collective stability and happiness and equality.

God, I'm lucky