Nov 4, 2008 | 8:16 PM | Election Night Post

by: Paul Miles

I have to share this with you, just because I think it's very cool.

Four years ago today, right before I moved into the apartment that I was in until this summer, my grandfather and I got into his silver Chrysler and drove down to the junior high school building so that we could vote. He and I were damn near diametrically opposed on almost everything at that point in our lives, with the glowing acception of our mutual hatred of George W Bush.

Tonight I picked up my mom at the train station in the white Dodge Dakota - the one that I bought with the help of money my grandfather left me when he passed - and her and I went to the same old junior high school to vote.

She's an old hippie, and we both love Bob Dylan records, and are both pretty far to the left. She's registered (D) while I still live on the fringe with my Libertarian affiliation (which has cost me a job, by the way). But her and I walked in to my old science class room and we voted. I was the 954th person to vote in the 4th district. Two years ago for the mid-terms, there were about 200 people in the 4th that turned out.

When we walked out we said to each other, "How cool was that?" And we weren't impressed with the voting booth, or the fact that we just voted. But in 25 years when I'm a little older and a little slower, I'll be able to tell my kids that long, long ago, before they were even a glimmer in my eye, that I participated in one of the most exciting Presidental elections in history.

I (hopefully) helped to elect the first black President in history. I participated in the election that kept this country out if it's second Great Depression and the one that ended the war in Iraq.

Now, I am a jaded old bastard, but hope, son. Hope.

Labels: barack obama, election day

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