« A Day in the Life | Main | Still Schoolin' »
September 10, 2008
Civics Lesson
We tossed normal school out the window today, and took a field trip.
I'm pretty sure ... I'm positive ... that this was my first political rally. All my life I've been fairly anti-political. By that I mean that if you said "politics," I would instantly fall asleep. Or try to change the channel. Which was embarrassing if the TV wasn't on.
And yet, we went. The kids asked where we were going, so I told them: "We're going to get in the car, drive slowly through lots of traffic, get to a park filled with thousands of people and no parking, give up and go home."
It took an hour to drive the 7 miles to the park. On the way, I noticed I was out of gas. The traffic was stop and go, with no gas station in sight. We finally found one when I was down to just a couple of gallons. We pulled up to the pump, and it was then that I realized that my debit card was still on my dresser. Thankfully there was a credit card hiding in my purse, or we might still be at that gas station.
Once we drove by the park itself, it just looked like too much fun to go home. All those people! And they were having fun! It felt like a party! And the protesters! Connor kept complaining about them, while I vigorously defended their right to be there. It wouldn't have been as fun without the protesters.
We had to park a mile away - literally. So we were late, and ended up with a bad spot. It didn't matter. We could hear everything. Sarah Palin's speech was the same as it's been lately - even my kids recognized that. John McCain is a much better speaker live than he is scripted on TV. He didn't say anything new either, but he sounded great.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 23,000 people showed up for this event ... and let me tell you, I have never seen a crowd that large be that polite. Everyone was polite. Everyone was friendly. Even when security totally botched the attempt to get all 23,000 people out of one gate, leaving us smashed against each other, everyone was still polite. And patient. There were kids everywhere, and many, many moms with babies in slings. (I so love to see babies in slings!) Complete strangers kept coming up to me to thank me for coming, and for bringing my kids.
It was fun. I'm scared.
Posted by lynx at September 10, 2008 10:42 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.caerdroia.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/2633
Comments
Good for you for going!
Posted by: Pensguys at September 11, 2008 12:21 AM
LOL I think that sometimes these trips are fun because of the excitement in the atmosphere :) Plus you now have the cachet of being able to say "Hey... I SAW John and Sarah IN REAL LIFE!". And your kids get bragging rights!
Glad you had a nice time there!!
Posted by: Rachel at September 11, 2008 1:29 PM
I so absolutely regret missing out on that opportunity! I realized it was going on at the park after it was over--had been carefully reading the Post's coverage of the Fx School issue (insane!) but picked the paper out of the lawn late on Wednesday. So glad you got to do that! Can we talk about it more on Saturday at the picnic? ;-)
Posted by: Lisandrea at September 12, 2008 10:41 PM