to hold an inaugural ball on the day of Barack Obama's inauguration than the Museum of American History. Well, there may be a few more appropriate places, but not too many. Wow. That's all I can say. I, a word person from the word go, can barely describe it.
For someone like me, the whole thing was much more like a movie I was watching, or a movie set I somehow wandered onto, than reality. But it was definitely real.
We walked through the door into a dark room with incredibly well-dressed people everywhere and three separate coat checks to the left. Chris headed for coat check immediately to rid himself of his sweatshirt and his long-sleeved t-shirt--they weren't the classiest things he could have been wearing--and immediately disappeared. I have no idea where he went. I, myself, disappeared in the women's bathroom to make myself look somewhat presentable, which took some skill. First of all, I had to find the thing. I figured if I followed the wall for long enough, I was bound to find a bathroom, and sure enough, it only took me five minutes or so to run into one. Then I had to get inside. That was easier said than done. I don't feel so bad, though, because there was another woman trying to get in who thought the door must be locked. It didn't look like a door. It was a big metal wall, probably fifteen feet high, with a handle set into it. I pushed. I pulled. She pushed. She pulled. To no avail. I backed up, confused. She wandered away to find another rest room. Then a woman finally came out of the bathroom and I saw that the doors did not push or pull at all. Instead, they slid. And here I thought I was good with high-tech gadgets.
I slipped into a stall and began the process of shedding layers. I took the long john shirt out from under my dress and tucked it into a plastic bag I had stashed in my purse. I thought about removing the socks from under my pantyhose, too, but that would have taken way too much effort and I'm not sure I would have gotten my pantyhose back on, since they were pretty much shredded from the knees up by that point. I tucked my scarf and gloves into my plastic bag as well, then slid my dress back on over my head and rearranged the neckline in the back, which was a weird floppy thing that I had nothing but trouble with. I did my best to tuck my socks down into my sexy, dusty, dirty black tennis shoes and straightened my pantyhose as much as possible without having them disintegrate in my hands. As I was walking out of the stall, my dad called. I don't generally answer my phone when I'm in the bathroom, but when my dad calls, I answer. You never know.
He was calling to tell me that the Obamas were attending the Neighborhood Ball, and that it was free, and that I should go there because Beyonce was singing. Since I had barely made it to the Michigan Ball at that point, and I was in possession of a $200 ticket for that one, I didn't necessarily consider his suggestion. I told him I had just gotten to the Museum and I was doing my best to make myself presentable, since I had been outside and in Union Station all day with no way to change. We got off the phone. The girl next to me said, "I know exactly what you mean. I got to go back to my hotel room and everything, and I still don't look presentable."
Let me describe to you what she looked like. She was about 5'5", maybe, and probably 125 pounds. Her shiny, chocolate-colored hair was arranged neatly into a bun at the back of her head, her lips were stained a delicate shade of pink, here eyes were discreetly mascaraed, and her finger nails were shiny and red. She was wearing a little black dress that ended probably six inches above her knees and still managed to look classy rather than skanky. She had on black nylons and black high heels that showcased her model-like legs perfectly. Compared to 300+ pound, 5'1" me, with my wrinkled red dress over a scraggly-looking gray one, my dirty sneakers, my runny pantyhose, my wind-blown hair, and my makeup-less face, she definitely looked presentable. Hell, next to Angelina Jolie at the Oscars, she would have looked presentable. Let's just say our conversation didn't do much to make me feel as if I fit in.
I finally made my way out of the bathroom and presented my plastic bag at coat check.
"This is it?" the man asked me. "No coat?"
"This is it," I told him. See, I had worn so many layers because I didn't have a coat that was both functional enough and classy enough to wear to both the inauguration and the ball, hence all the layers. I was wearing a black sweater over my dresses, and it was quite warm in the building, probably because everyone else was wearing sleeveless ball gowns, but I couldn't take off my sweater because then the sleeves of the gray dress would show from under the sleeves of the red dress and I would be back to looking homeless. So, the bag of under layers was all I had to check. The man looked at me oddly, but he checked my bag. I swung my purse over my shoulder and set off to find Chris.
I finally found him standing in the crowd. We went through the line where they were taking tickets and we were finally in. Everything was beautiful. Absolutely breath-taking. The museum was all stairs and escalators and sleek gray surfaces and marble floors. The people were all sophisticated and dressed in rich shades of black and gray and red, and they were of all colors and sizes and backgrounds. I didn't know where to look first. We rounded a corner and found a buffet table, a bar, and an empty pub table with no chairs around it. We each filled a plate and made a bee-line for the table. It had been a while since we'd eaten. Once we were settled at the table, we started looking through the program booklets we'd been given. I, in fact, studied mine carefully, because Chris took off to go the bathroom and it was easier to be occupied with something than it was to watch everyone watching me, all alone and homeless-looking.
It was then that I discovered that the ball was not simply being held in a ballroom or some such thing. It was filling the whole museum. All three floors. Each floor was overflowing with people, buffets, bars, and music. One floor had a high school honors band playing. Another had a swing band. The first floor, in an atrium that was the height of the building, was home to a rock band that was playing to a crowd of hundreds who were dancing, shoulder to shoulder, on an enormous dance floor. And all the museum displays were open to us.
We spent the rest of the night talking to people (and finding out exactly who had gotten in to the Inauguration (our friends Miles and Marcella among them) and who hadn't (Jesse Jackson and Michigan State Senator Mike Prusi- and us, of course). We looked at many of the displays. We cringed because our feet hurt like hell and we couldn't keep up with Chris as he ran manically from one room to the next. Okay, that was just me. We ate more--braised beef over grits with Michigan cherry sauce, fish, chicken in cherry sauce, lots of things. We had drinks--I had orange juice because the first thing Chris ordered was a Jack and Coke that was about 95% Jack and I got drunk just smelling it. We just looked at everything in wonder. And took lots of pictures, of the ball and of each other.
I had been worrying all night about how we were going to leave the ball. Or rather, how we were going to get back to our hotel in Baltimore. It was colder than we had anticipated, much too cold to hang out outside all night, and they wouldn't let us into Union Station without train tickets. I checked online to see if there were Amtrak tickets left, because our cabbie had assured us that Amtrak ran all night, but to no avail. Everything was sold out. I had also saved the number of the cab company in my phone, because the cabbie had assured us as well that they could take us back to Baltimore. Also to no avail. The operator I talked to said that they were based in Arlington and would not go into Washington any more than night because so many streets were still blocked off. She gave me the name of another cab company. I looked them up online on my phone. Their website would not load for the longest time, ,and when it did, there was no phone number. I looked it up on Google. Nothing. I tried to use their online cab request form, but that didn't work either. I finally used the Internet White Pages and found a phone number. I asked Chris to call. He gave me a snotty look. I went outside where it was quiet and did it myself.
Except that I did nothing. No one answered. I tried several times. Chris eventually, to his credit, did come looking for me. He tried using the online request form. He tried calling. Nothing doing. And finally, finally, he said that since it was 11:30 already and the Ball ended at midnight, maybe we should go start looking for a cab on the street, before everyone else did. I was so grateful that I almost kissed him. I was in excruciating pain from standing on my feet and sitting on a cement floor all day, with leftover blisters from the day before covering the bottoms of my feet. So, we went inside, took a few more pictures, and tried to get through coat check without incident. I say tried because there was GayNaziCoatCheckAttendantMan micromanaging the people in line. Chris was well aware, since he had run into the man once before in an attempt to get outside and use his phone, but it was all new to me.
Coat check was not all that complicated. There were three sections: red, white, and blue. You gave them your stuff and you got a tag. Color-coded, even: red, white, or blue. So when you went to pick up your coat or whatever, you got in a line: red, white, or blue. Not at all complicated. Except that GayNaziCoatCheckAttendantMan was making everyone get in one line, then letting one person of each color through at a time. He would ask what color your tag was, point in the direction of the appropriate coat check, and scream out a color. If you tried to walk through and get into your line without his direction, he freaked. Screamed. Yelled. Wrung his hands.
"That's WHITE!" he'd scream, and stop you by placing his hand dead center on your chest. "I said BLUE!!!!!!!!!" Because it was SO complicated; we very obviously couldn't match colors and get in line by ourselves. Finally, we managed to get our stuff, and we each collected a poster from the event and a souvenir ticket. And we escaped.
We walked a couple of blocks to where we could see traffic moving freely. Better chance of getting a cab that way. Better, but not good. And that, my friends, I will leave for the rest of the story.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
We Managed To Stand Up
without knocking too many people over, which was no small feat. And then we managed to fight our way out of Union Station, another feat of enormous proportions. We stopped along the way to inquire about the best place in which to hail a cab, since the entrance that was labeled "taxis" was being guarded by snipers and no one was allowed to use it. We asked two or three people, all of whom gave us the same non-answer: "Good luck!"
So, we just went outside and hoped for the best. Luckily, the door we were forced to exit through was across the street from what looked like a hotel. Since it was on the corner of an intersection of two streets that were both actually open, we figured it might be a good place to start. Besides that, the doorman from the hotel was hailing cabs for hotel guests, so we thought it might be a good idea to observe an expert at work. We watched him hail two or three cabs and then, certain that we knew what we were doing, we became his competition.
A cab stopped. Chris hunched his shoulders down and reached for the door. The doorman ducked under his arm and secured the cab for three of his guests. Chris, looking disappointed, straightened his shoulders and looked across the street, where we watched an empty cab slide through the intersection. Roughly the same thing happened three or four more times.
I am going to interrupt myself for just a second to point out that I had suggested to Chris that we leave Union Station a half hour before we did, in case we had trouble getting a cab. I earned an eye roll for that suggestion, and a complete dismissal. So, we left when Chris wanted to leave.
Okay, back to working the corner. Not like that- hailing cabs, I mean. Although, the other might have been easier. After the doorman we had learned from stole 5 or 6 cabs from us, cabs that we stopped, we decided to cross the street. After all, we had wistfully watched several cabs slip through the intersection unnoticed, over there. Once we were there, of course, they all disappeared. Word must have gotten out that there was no one over there looking for a cab. We went back to our original corner, hoping that the doorman would be less "on guard." No such luck. Then, I had a brilliant idea. We had crossed the street to reach the cabs that were going in the opposite direction. But what if we crossed the other street, so that the cabs got to us a half a block before they got to the doorman? I was halfway across the street before I managed to explain to Chris, over my shoulder, what I was doing. And we were barely there long enough to wonder if we could just figure out how to get to the museum and walk before Chris waved his hand and a cab stopped. A cab with a driver who was perfectly willing to take us to the Museum of American History.
And that was the beginning of a whole new adventure. We actually got a cab driver who spoke English, which I had heard was rare. He was a very nice guy, though.
The first thing we did was stop on the corner by the hotel and it was with great pleasure that Chris and I listened as the cabbie told the doorman that he had just picked up passengers. The doorman still managed to convince him to pick up one more, though, a very regal African woman. African, in this case, is not a PC way to say black, and I did not forget to attach the word "American" to it. She was African- the cab driver figured Kenyan. She spoke less English than the cabbie did. She was on her way to the African ball, and the cabbie knew exactly where it was. Since our ball was only a mile or two away, he assured us that he would deliver us first. Except, as it turned out, that could very well have been an empty promise. Not an intentional one, but empty all the same. Because every single road we tried to take was closed. See, the Inaugural Parade had apparently been going on for four or so hours and was still going. The streets were not re-opened. We would drive for a few blocks and then suddenly come upon a gaggle of police cars accompanied by men and women in reflective vests who were waiting to point us in exactly the direction we did not want to take. The cabbie stopped and told a police officer where he was trying to go and that he was "completely out of ideas." The officer said it was just hard for everyone to get around, but he made a suggestion, the cabbie took it, and we were off again. During this whole ordeal, the African woman was grumbling in a progressively louder voice- in her native language, of course. And she made about a million phone calls, during which she was fairly obviously complaining about the cabbie. Finally, she asked him if he was going to take her to her ball. He told her he was trying, and she should try to relax, and she harrumphed. At that point, he looked ahead, told us we were just a few blocks from our ball, and was immediately greeted with the sight of four police cars, sirens wailing and lights flashing, that blocked the road in front of us and forced us to do a u-turn.
"Presidential motorcade," the cabbie muttered. "I don't know what went wrong. When Clinton was elected, his people knew what they were doing. Hardly any time at all and he had the people off of the streets and into the balls." This cracked Chris and I up, immature members of society that we are. But it wasn't our fault. Brilliant politician that he is, no one can argue that fact the Clinton was definitely good at getting people into the balls, most notably his own. The cabbie then continued to add to our mirth by screeching to a halt just past an intersection, waving at another cab driver, and jumping out of the cab. We were mildly confused until he sprinted to the passenger side of the car, opened the front door, and took the African woman's elbow. "Come with me," he said. "This cab will take you to your ball." He slammed her door and helped her into the other cab-- both cabs were pretty much just parked in the middle of the street-- and then he returned to us. He looked over his shoulder at us and said, in explanation, "She was getting crabby."
He informed us that our museum was just a couple blocks over and we should be there soon. He drove toward it and was forced to stop, yet again, by road blocks. He took another corner and drove in another direction. And again. Finally, he pulled over and stopped.
"That's it over there. Just two blocks down, I think." He pointed. "You'll have to walk. I can't get any closer." So, I handed him 20 bucks (for what was supposed to be a ride of just over a mile, by the way, that took us more than 25 minutes in the end) and got out. I promptly dropped my gloves, so I turned to grab them and knocked my head into Chris's head, which was moving at a high velocity as he jumped out of the cab. It hurt. A lot. But we were almost there!
We hurriedly walked the two blocks in the indicated direction and were left completely confused because nothing looked like a museum. Well Chris walked. I sort of stumbled. I had mountainous blisters on my feet from the day before and was aching all over from all the standing and such, and so what I was doing might be described more accurately as hobbling. I hobbled down the sidewalk a good 50 feet behind Chris, the man who told me before we left that if I couldn't keep up, he could just walk slower. Right.
Discouraged, we asked someone on the sidewalk where the Smithsonian Museum of American History might be found. They pointed another block down and said it was one of three buildings we could see. We continued. And, surprise of surprises, the first building we got to was the one we wanted. We walked another three quarters of a block to get to the only lit up door we could see. When we arrived, we were promptly informed by a security officer that we needed to enter on the opposite side of the block-long building. Of course. So, off we went. We ran into someone we knew from working on the campaign on our way around, and his date, so that was nice for Chris. It gave him someone to talk to while he ran ahead of me and I huffed and puffed and hobbled and wobbled behind him, half running myself but still not moving fast enough to keep up. We finally got around the building and found a giant set of stairs that led us into the building. At last, we were there. And once we got inside, it was all worth it.
Stay tuned.
So, we just went outside and hoped for the best. Luckily, the door we were forced to exit through was across the street from what looked like a hotel. Since it was on the corner of an intersection of two streets that were both actually open, we figured it might be a good place to start. Besides that, the doorman from the hotel was hailing cabs for hotel guests, so we thought it might be a good idea to observe an expert at work. We watched him hail two or three cabs and then, certain that we knew what we were doing, we became his competition.
A cab stopped. Chris hunched his shoulders down and reached for the door. The doorman ducked under his arm and secured the cab for three of his guests. Chris, looking disappointed, straightened his shoulders and looked across the street, where we watched an empty cab slide through the intersection. Roughly the same thing happened three or four more times.
I am going to interrupt myself for just a second to point out that I had suggested to Chris that we leave Union Station a half hour before we did, in case we had trouble getting a cab. I earned an eye roll for that suggestion, and a complete dismissal. So, we left when Chris wanted to leave.
Okay, back to working the corner. Not like that- hailing cabs, I mean. Although, the other might have been easier. After the doorman we had learned from stole 5 or 6 cabs from us, cabs that we stopped, we decided to cross the street. After all, we had wistfully watched several cabs slip through the intersection unnoticed, over there. Once we were there, of course, they all disappeared. Word must have gotten out that there was no one over there looking for a cab. We went back to our original corner, hoping that the doorman would be less "on guard." No such luck. Then, I had a brilliant idea. We had crossed the street to reach the cabs that were going in the opposite direction. But what if we crossed the other street, so that the cabs got to us a half a block before they got to the doorman? I was halfway across the street before I managed to explain to Chris, over my shoulder, what I was doing. And we were barely there long enough to wonder if we could just figure out how to get to the museum and walk before Chris waved his hand and a cab stopped. A cab with a driver who was perfectly willing to take us to the Museum of American History.
And that was the beginning of a whole new adventure. We actually got a cab driver who spoke English, which I had heard was rare. He was a very nice guy, though.
The first thing we did was stop on the corner by the hotel and it was with great pleasure that Chris and I listened as the cabbie told the doorman that he had just picked up passengers. The doorman still managed to convince him to pick up one more, though, a very regal African woman. African, in this case, is not a PC way to say black, and I did not forget to attach the word "American" to it. She was African- the cab driver figured Kenyan. She spoke less English than the cabbie did. She was on her way to the African ball, and the cabbie knew exactly where it was. Since our ball was only a mile or two away, he assured us that he would deliver us first. Except, as it turned out, that could very well have been an empty promise. Not an intentional one, but empty all the same. Because every single road we tried to take was closed. See, the Inaugural Parade had apparently been going on for four or so hours and was still going. The streets were not re-opened. We would drive for a few blocks and then suddenly come upon a gaggle of police cars accompanied by men and women in reflective vests who were waiting to point us in exactly the direction we did not want to take. The cabbie stopped and told a police officer where he was trying to go and that he was "completely out of ideas." The officer said it was just hard for everyone to get around, but he made a suggestion, the cabbie took it, and we were off again. During this whole ordeal, the African woman was grumbling in a progressively louder voice- in her native language, of course. And she made about a million phone calls, during which she was fairly obviously complaining about the cabbie. Finally, she asked him if he was going to take her to her ball. He told her he was trying, and she should try to relax, and she harrumphed. At that point, he looked ahead, told us we were just a few blocks from our ball, and was immediately greeted with the sight of four police cars, sirens wailing and lights flashing, that blocked the road in front of us and forced us to do a u-turn.
"Presidential motorcade," the cabbie muttered. "I don't know what went wrong. When Clinton was elected, his people knew what they were doing. Hardly any time at all and he had the people off of the streets and into the balls." This cracked Chris and I up, immature members of society that we are. But it wasn't our fault. Brilliant politician that he is, no one can argue that fact the Clinton was definitely good at getting people into the balls, most notably his own. The cabbie then continued to add to our mirth by screeching to a halt just past an intersection, waving at another cab driver, and jumping out of the cab. We were mildly confused until he sprinted to the passenger side of the car, opened the front door, and took the African woman's elbow. "Come with me," he said. "This cab will take you to your ball." He slammed her door and helped her into the other cab-- both cabs were pretty much just parked in the middle of the street-- and then he returned to us. He looked over his shoulder at us and said, in explanation, "She was getting crabby."
He informed us that our museum was just a couple blocks over and we should be there soon. He drove toward it and was forced to stop, yet again, by road blocks. He took another corner and drove in another direction. And again. Finally, he pulled over and stopped.
"That's it over there. Just two blocks down, I think." He pointed. "You'll have to walk. I can't get any closer." So, I handed him 20 bucks (for what was supposed to be a ride of just over a mile, by the way, that took us more than 25 minutes in the end) and got out. I promptly dropped my gloves, so I turned to grab them and knocked my head into Chris's head, which was moving at a high velocity as he jumped out of the cab. It hurt. A lot. But we were almost there!
We hurriedly walked the two blocks in the indicated direction and were left completely confused because nothing looked like a museum. Well Chris walked. I sort of stumbled. I had mountainous blisters on my feet from the day before and was aching all over from all the standing and such, and so what I was doing might be described more accurately as hobbling. I hobbled down the sidewalk a good 50 feet behind Chris, the man who told me before we left that if I couldn't keep up, he could just walk slower. Right.
Discouraged, we asked someone on the sidewalk where the Smithsonian Museum of American History might be found. They pointed another block down and said it was one of three buildings we could see. We continued. And, surprise of surprises, the first building we got to was the one we wanted. We walked another three quarters of a block to get to the only lit up door we could see. When we arrived, we were promptly informed by a security officer that we needed to enter on the opposite side of the block-long building. Of course. So, off we went. We ran into someone we knew from working on the campaign on our way around, and his date, so that was nice for Chris. It gave him someone to talk to while he ran ahead of me and I huffed and puffed and hobbled and wobbled behind him, half running myself but still not moving fast enough to keep up. We finally got around the building and found a giant set of stairs that led us into the building. At last, we were there. And once we got inside, it was all worth it.
Stay tuned.
Monday, February 9, 2009
I Have Been Neglecting My Blog
, I know, and I'm sorry. I was a bad, bad girl. I won't do it again. I've just been a little down in the dumps lately, and not very motivated at all. But, that's life, I guess, and another story. One I will tell when I finally get finished with the telling of the tale of my trip to DC.
On Inauguration Day, we spent a few minutes getting over the fact that we didn't get to see or hear anything. A very few minutes. Our first thought once we had gotten past the disappointment (yes, we actually did kind of share one thought) was that we should try to see the parade. Immediately, though, we realized a few things.
1.) We had no idea which way the parade route was, and we couldn't follow the crowd because there really was no crowd. Which led us to
2.) The approximately 6.000 people who had been keeping our arms pinned to our sides while we waited in line for four hours were mostly gone, probably to parade route, and probably taking up all the good viewing places. And that, in turn, led us to
3) We had been standing in line for 4 hours, which kinda makes ya wanna sit down. And then
4) We went into survival mode, because it was COLD out.
So, back to Union Station it was. We had heard that much of the station was going to be closed down for the day, but there were lots of people going inside and we figured they had to be going somewhere, so we would find somewhere to go, too. We followed a gaggle of people who appeared to be going inside. We walked all the way around a huge blockade closing down the street in front of the station until we were halted by a Secret Service agent. Well, we weren't. A jogger in front of us was.
"Ma'am, I can't let you go over there," he said.
"Really?" she asked.
"Really," he replied.
"But look at all those people. They're all going in that way."
"Yes they are. But you aren't."
"Oh, come on. Why didn't you stop them?"
"Because I have to start somewhere and you were the one I got to first. Go the other way!"
So a very pissed off jogger turned around and jogged away. We, also, turned to leave. We did not jog. I didn't, at least. It took us an extra 2o minutes to get around the blockaded street and into the rear entrance of the building. It was 1:30 or 2 by the time we got in. We hadn't eaten yet and we'd been up since 4. Food seemed like a good idea, so we went downstairs into the food court. At least I think it was the food court. All I could see was people and people and people forever. We went down a beautiful wooden staircase into a sea of people. I'm not exaggerating. I swear. You literally had to swim to get through them. There were, like, a googleplex of tables and chairs in the middle of the room, and every single one was taken. All of the tables and even some of the chairs, in fact, were taken by more than one person. And all the wall space was full of people standing and leaning or sitting with their legs curled under them to avoid amputation by trampling. It was the kind of crowd where you have to hug the person in front of you and spin around to trade places. I almost gave up on eating anything when I saw all the people, but I was pretty hungry. Then, miracle of miracles, as we wandered through the ocean of arms and legs and torsoes that were so numerous that they didn't even seem to be connected to each other, I saw the end of a ling. And it was only 20 or so people from the cash register!
I didn't even look to see what restaurant it was; I just dove right into that line. Chris followed, thoroughly confused.
"We'll eat here. Looks like a decent place."
He shrugged in indifference and we waited. There was a real Nazi at the cash register. I'm pretty sure. An Asian one, but a Nazi all the same.
"WHAT YOU WANT?!?" she shriek-growled at me. I told her what number meal I wanted and stammered out what I wanted to drink. "YOU NEXT!!!" she roared at Chris, who just ordered what I ordered, probably because it was all he could think of when his life was being threatened by the woman behind the counter. We had a slight argument with the man who was cooking because he didn't give Chris any fries and didn't speak English well enough to understand what we meant, but finally we were the proud owners of bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and drinks. We made our way to someplace out of the way, which wasn't easy. I thought maybe we'd be able to swoop into the seats at a table as someone stood up to leave, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The people standing in between the tables were vultures waiting for a place to sit, and to dive in front of a hungry vulture is to beg for death. We finally made it across the room and found a random, pointless hallway in the food court. There was seating space (by which I literally mean space to sit on the floor, not an actual table and chairs or even just chairs) along one wall, and so that's where we sat. We sat there and ate our burgers and such and then just continued to sit there because there was no place else to go. It was too cold out to spend much time outside, and there wasn't much to do outside but duck out of people's way anyway. While we were sitting there, we discovered that the place we had ordered our food from was called Flamers. We immediately took a picture of a cup to share with our friend Tom, who is of the flaming persuasion. But like all good times, it had to come to an end. We had been sitting there for probably 45 minutes, thinking that if they didn't close the food court after all, maybe we could get away with sitting there until we had to go to the Ball, when a police officer of some sort came and told us we had to leave. I'm really not sure what kind of a police officer he was. There were DC Police, Union Station Police, Amtrak Police, FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security officers everywhere, along with other acronyms I can't remember, I'm sure. The FBI even had snipers walking through the crowd. It catches your attention when a man dressed in camouflage and carrying a sniper rifle brushes up against you, let me tell you.
We climbed the enormous staircase back to the main floor. At the top, we settled ourselves against the rail that overlooked the food court. That lasted a few minutes, then some people came and asked us to move forward. They started putting up huge poles with curtains on them around the food court rail, which confused us until we overheard someone saying that the CIA was holding their Inaugural Ball in Union Station. Eventually we lost our seating altogether and just sort of stood in front of a kiosk with a TV screen announcing train arrivals and departures. Police officers of varying types asked us several times if we had train tickets; those who did not have tickets were forced to leave. Luckily, we had tickets. We were not intending to use them, since we had bought them before we knew we were staying for the Ball, and I thought they were useless, but it turns out that they were very useful, for keeping us out of the cold and off of the street. They were our pass to stay in Union Station until 8:30, and we planned to leave before then anyway.
We kept getting moved from one place to another until finally, we were herded into the area where all the trains were boarding. The CIA had the rest of the place closed down. Apparently they're pretty big on security. The crowd was amazing. We squeezed ourselves into a little space between some pay phones and the entrance to an Au Bon Pain, right across the hall from Union Station Liquor. I'm not lying. They have a liquor store in a train station. We strongly considered partaking. It might have made the day more exciting. Once we were settled, all we had to do was wait. The Ball was at 7:30. We got to our "campsite," so to speak, sometime around 3 or 3:30. It was a long wait. Chris is not good at waiting. And it was noisy. And crowded. Every so often, there was a little space, in between train boardings, but mostly, there were people touching us. Everyone was trying to get sorted into train lines or get through the building to exit or find their trains. For the entire time that we were sitting there, I am pretty sure there were not more than ten minutes that I was not being touched by another body. We met a few nice people, though, particularly one man who sat there for quite a while himself waiting for his train. He was an older black guy and we had a good time talking with him about the campaign and the Inauguration. Chris talked to him just fine; he doesn't bother trying to be nice to me when he's in a shitty mood anymore, but he is a social butterfly, so other people bring out the best in him. I fought my way to the bathroom once, but the experience was so traumatic that I decided if I had to go again, I would just hike up my dress and squat. I'm pretty sure no one would have noticed.
And then, finally, at long, long, long, long, long, long (you get the idea) last, quarter after 7. Our next task, finding a cab, was a daunting one. Neither Chris nor I had ever hailed a cab before, and the day of Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington DC was probably not a good place to start, but what the hell. May as well just jump in, right? So, we watched a doorman from a hotel get cabs for a few people and then prepared ourselves to be his competition.
Up next: An amazing Inaugural Ball sandwiched between two equally hair-raising and deliciously horrifying cab rides.
On Inauguration Day, we spent a few minutes getting over the fact that we didn't get to see or hear anything. A very few minutes. Our first thought once we had gotten past the disappointment (yes, we actually did kind of share one thought) was that we should try to see the parade. Immediately, though, we realized a few things.
1.) We had no idea which way the parade route was, and we couldn't follow the crowd because there really was no crowd. Which led us to
2.) The approximately 6.000 people who had been keeping our arms pinned to our sides while we waited in line for four hours were mostly gone, probably to parade route, and probably taking up all the good viewing places. And that, in turn, led us to
3) We had been standing in line for 4 hours, which kinda makes ya wanna sit down. And then
4) We went into survival mode, because it was COLD out.
So, back to Union Station it was. We had heard that much of the station was going to be closed down for the day, but there were lots of people going inside and we figured they had to be going somewhere, so we would find somewhere to go, too. We followed a gaggle of people who appeared to be going inside. We walked all the way around a huge blockade closing down the street in front of the station until we were halted by a Secret Service agent. Well, we weren't. A jogger in front of us was.
"Ma'am, I can't let you go over there," he said.
"Really?" she asked.
"Really," he replied.
"But look at all those people. They're all going in that way."
"Yes they are. But you aren't."
"Oh, come on. Why didn't you stop them?"
"Because I have to start somewhere and you were the one I got to first. Go the other way!"
So a very pissed off jogger turned around and jogged away. We, also, turned to leave. We did not jog. I didn't, at least. It took us an extra 2o minutes to get around the blockaded street and into the rear entrance of the building. It was 1:30 or 2 by the time we got in. We hadn't eaten yet and we'd been up since 4. Food seemed like a good idea, so we went downstairs into the food court. At least I think it was the food court. All I could see was people and people and people forever. We went down a beautiful wooden staircase into a sea of people. I'm not exaggerating. I swear. You literally had to swim to get through them. There were, like, a googleplex of tables and chairs in the middle of the room, and every single one was taken. All of the tables and even some of the chairs, in fact, were taken by more than one person. And all the wall space was full of people standing and leaning or sitting with their legs curled under them to avoid amputation by trampling. It was the kind of crowd where you have to hug the person in front of you and spin around to trade places. I almost gave up on eating anything when I saw all the people, but I was pretty hungry. Then, miracle of miracles, as we wandered through the ocean of arms and legs and torsoes that were so numerous that they didn't even seem to be connected to each other, I saw the end of a ling. And it was only 20 or so people from the cash register!
I didn't even look to see what restaurant it was; I just dove right into that line. Chris followed, thoroughly confused.
"We'll eat here. Looks like a decent place."
He shrugged in indifference and we waited. There was a real Nazi at the cash register. I'm pretty sure. An Asian one, but a Nazi all the same.
"WHAT YOU WANT?!?" she shriek-growled at me. I told her what number meal I wanted and stammered out what I wanted to drink. "YOU NEXT!!!" she roared at Chris, who just ordered what I ordered, probably because it was all he could think of when his life was being threatened by the woman behind the counter. We had a slight argument with the man who was cooking because he didn't give Chris any fries and didn't speak English well enough to understand what we meant, but finally we were the proud owners of bacon cheeseburgers, fries, and drinks. We made our way to someplace out of the way, which wasn't easy. I thought maybe we'd be able to swoop into the seats at a table as someone stood up to leave, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The people standing in between the tables were vultures waiting for a place to sit, and to dive in front of a hungry vulture is to beg for death. We finally made it across the room and found a random, pointless hallway in the food court. There was seating space (by which I literally mean space to sit on the floor, not an actual table and chairs or even just chairs) along one wall, and so that's where we sat. We sat there and ate our burgers and such and then just continued to sit there because there was no place else to go. It was too cold out to spend much time outside, and there wasn't much to do outside but duck out of people's way anyway. While we were sitting there, we discovered that the place we had ordered our food from was called Flamers. We immediately took a picture of a cup to share with our friend Tom, who is of the flaming persuasion. But like all good times, it had to come to an end. We had been sitting there for probably 45 minutes, thinking that if they didn't close the food court after all, maybe we could get away with sitting there until we had to go to the Ball, when a police officer of some sort came and told us we had to leave. I'm really not sure what kind of a police officer he was. There were DC Police, Union Station Police, Amtrak Police, FBI, CIA, NSA, and Homeland Security officers everywhere, along with other acronyms I can't remember, I'm sure. The FBI even had snipers walking through the crowd. It catches your attention when a man dressed in camouflage and carrying a sniper rifle brushes up against you, let me tell you.
We climbed the enormous staircase back to the main floor. At the top, we settled ourselves against the rail that overlooked the food court. That lasted a few minutes, then some people came and asked us to move forward. They started putting up huge poles with curtains on them around the food court rail, which confused us until we overheard someone saying that the CIA was holding their Inaugural Ball in Union Station. Eventually we lost our seating altogether and just sort of stood in front of a kiosk with a TV screen announcing train arrivals and departures. Police officers of varying types asked us several times if we had train tickets; those who did not have tickets were forced to leave. Luckily, we had tickets. We were not intending to use them, since we had bought them before we knew we were staying for the Ball, and I thought they were useless, but it turns out that they were very useful, for keeping us out of the cold and off of the street. They were our pass to stay in Union Station until 8:30, and we planned to leave before then anyway.
We kept getting moved from one place to another until finally, we were herded into the area where all the trains were boarding. The CIA had the rest of the place closed down. Apparently they're pretty big on security. The crowd was amazing. We squeezed ourselves into a little space between some pay phones and the entrance to an Au Bon Pain, right across the hall from Union Station Liquor. I'm not lying. They have a liquor store in a train station. We strongly considered partaking. It might have made the day more exciting. Once we were settled, all we had to do was wait. The Ball was at 7:30. We got to our "campsite," so to speak, sometime around 3 or 3:30. It was a long wait. Chris is not good at waiting. And it was noisy. And crowded. Every so often, there was a little space, in between train boardings, but mostly, there were people touching us. Everyone was trying to get sorted into train lines or get through the building to exit or find their trains. For the entire time that we were sitting there, I am pretty sure there were not more than ten minutes that I was not being touched by another body. We met a few nice people, though, particularly one man who sat there for quite a while himself waiting for his train. He was an older black guy and we had a good time talking with him about the campaign and the Inauguration. Chris talked to him just fine; he doesn't bother trying to be nice to me when he's in a shitty mood anymore, but he is a social butterfly, so other people bring out the best in him. I fought my way to the bathroom once, but the experience was so traumatic that I decided if I had to go again, I would just hike up my dress and squat. I'm pretty sure no one would have noticed.
And then, finally, at long, long, long, long, long, long (you get the idea) last, quarter after 7. Our next task, finding a cab, was a daunting one. Neither Chris nor I had ever hailed a cab before, and the day of Barack Obama's inauguration in Washington DC was probably not a good place to start, but what the hell. May as well just jump in, right? So, we watched a doorman from a hotel get cabs for a few people and then prepared ourselves to be his competition.
Up next: An amazing Inaugural Ball sandwiched between two equally hair-raising and deliciously horrifying cab rides.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
A Man Who Can Make A Woman Scratch A Stranger's Nose
has to be a man who will be a good president. That is why I have faith in Barack Obama.
But we'll start with first things first. Inauguration Day was one of the longest days of my life. It started when I woke up at 4:55. AM. 4:55 is, normally, more a bedtime for me than a time to get up. Ugh. I started off the day by showering in a dirty hotel room bathroom and then layering on my clothing. There were the usual underthings, of course, and then a pair of athletic socks which looked really sexy once I pulled on a pair of black nylons over them. I put on a turquoise thermal undershirt, then a silky gray long skirt and shirt that would serve to keep me warm and also to hide the fact that the dress I was wearing gapped a bit at the buttons. Then on went my red dress and a black sweater. I donned a pair of black tennis shoes that were salted gray from wearing them around at home all winter and a pair of gray fake pearl earrings. I looked like a homeless person, but at least I looked like a dressed up homeless person.
We drove the fifteen minutes or so to the train station, or at least to where my GPS told us the train station was. We found a parking garage and some train tracks, but no train station. Well, I saw what I thought might be a train station, but my opinion doesn't matter much to some people, so we went and parked in the garage and then asked someone where it was. And then someone else. And then... the fourth person we asked finally pointed us to a small structure across the street. I thought Camden Station was going to be a large one, because it had roughly ten times the parking that Penn Station had, and Penn Station was a pretty decent size. The parking mentioned on the website, however, was in a garage also used for parking at Orioles games. The station was a glass building between two sets of railroad tracks. It might have been twenty feet by ten feet. Maybe.
There were lines of people waiting outside and it took us five or ten minutes to be sure we were waiting in the correct line. There were people in line for the 7:00 train, the 7:20 train, and the 7:40 train, which was ours. We interviewed several policemen and people in each line before we were satisfied that we were in the right place.
Before I continue, I need to interject with a little side story. Chris, who rolled his eyes at me and teased me mercilessly for creating an itinerary for the trip, and who mentioned on a few separate occasions that it was ridiculous how I set everything I might need the following day out before I went to bed every night, forgot his coat. He put on his suit coat in the hotel room and walked out without his coat. It was about 15 degrees outside. So, the wait outside the train station was considerably longer for him than it was for me. He, at one point, was going to drive back to the hotel to get it, but he decided against it when I said if he didn't make it back in time, we could just watch the inauguration from our hotel. This incident helped shape the rest of the day for us. Okay, back to the story.
It was shortly after 7:40 when they organized us into a single file line and got us ready for our train. A police officer started yelling a woman's name, asking if she was in line. He found her almost immediately and then another woman, an older black woman with tears in her eyes, jumped out of line and thanked him. She had just wanted to make sure the other woman had her train ticket, she said, because the two of them had been separated. "She's gotta see it. She's gotta get there," the woman said loudly to everyone in line. "She has to. I don't care if I die tomorrow as long as I see that man put his black hand on the bible and take that oath!"
We boarded the train and started on our way. I tried a few times to make conversation with Chris, but I just gave up in the end because every time I opened my mouth, he either said something completely dismissive or just rolled his eyes at me. I get that he was pissy because he was cold, but civility is always a good thing to hold on to.
It was almost an hour before we pulled into Union Station. When we got off the train, the crowd of people rushing all in the same direction must have finally awakened a little excitement in Chris, because he got a tiny bit friendlier. As we were exiting the station, we saw a street vendor selling long-sleeved Obama t-shirts, so I stopped and bought one for Chris. I didn't really feel like spending the ten bucks, but he didn't have any cash at all and I didn't feel like having a horrible day listening to him bitch and bearing the brunt of his wrath. Ten minutes later, we saw a guy selling hoodies, so I bought him one of those, too. He put both of his shirts on under his suit coat and was finally warm enough to be nice for a while.
We followed the signs that pointed us in the direction of the Purple Gate line, since we had Purple Section tickets. What basically happened was that tens of thousands of people were funneled into an intersection flanked by the Mail Carriers' Association and the Home Loan Board buildings. The people in that area had purple, yellow, and silver tickets. There weren't really lines, though. I mean, the people with yellow tickets were all in what might be called a line, but it was several people thick and not in any real line shape, and they were intermingled with silver and purple ticket holders. We all recognized that we were in lines, but the lines were shoved together and twisted through each other and if you looked down from above, all you would have seen was a mob of thousands of people, not in any distinguishable lines at all.
From that point on, all we did was stand in "line." We moved a little bit, but I am not exaggerating when I said we moved fifty feet in two hours. And there were too many people for us to see why we weren't going anywhere. We met some cool people in line. Lots of other people who had worked on the campaign. One woman said she was in heaven because, like during the campaign, she was talking to hundreds of people about Barack Obama, but unlike during the campaign, she didn't have to convince a single one of them that he was a good guy. It was incredible to be surrounded by so many people; I've never even seen such a crowd in my life, much less been in one. It was even more incredible that they were all like-minded.
There were snipers on the top of every building I could see. It made me feel safe in some ways, of course, but it left me a little uneasy, too. If there was a need for a sniper, I figured, bad things were going to go down, because no one would be able to move to get away to safety. Besides that, I was mildly frightened that I or someone near me would, completely innocently, make a wrong move and get blown away. Luckily, that didn't happen. After a couple hours, though, some people did start getting restless. People were trying to leave our "line" and go figure out what was going on, but they weren't so much walking through the crowd. Instead, they were moving by hugging the person in front of them and then spinning to trade places with that person. That's how crowded it was. One woman, when she got to a tree, climbed it and tried to incite a riot by demanding that they let us in and encouraging us to take charge of the situation and MAKE them let us in. Luckily, no one took her too seriously.
Another guy climbed up into the tree when he got there, but for more innocent reasons. He just wanted to see if he could tell what was going on, because we were only 200 or so feet from the gate but we hadn't really moved in over an hour. That led to a rather interesting phone conversation between the man next to me and a friend he had gotten separated from. "Oh, you're by the Mail Carriers' building?" he asked. "I am too. No, not really. I have no idea what direction I am in from it because there are too many people for me to figure out where you are. Okay, wait. Do you see a guy in a tree? Yeah, that guy. I'm to his right."
It was incredible being a part of that line. I saw people talking down others who were struggling to convince us to get in by force. I saw people clearing the crowd away to the best of their ability to make things easy for a couple of elderly women who had been standing in line since 6 am with walkers. I saw a woman scratch another woman's nose for her. Yep, that's right. There was a woman who was making funny faces and sounds until someone asked her if she was okay. "Fine." she said. "It's just that my nose itches like hell and it's driving me crazy. I can't move my arms to scratch it. There's too many people." "Is there someone around who can scratch the lady's nose?" someone asked and we all laughed. "My boyfriend's right over there," she told us, nodding in the direction he was in, "But he can't reach me." Another woman asked her, "Do you want me to scratch it?" "Of course not. That's ridiculous. You're a stranger. I can't ask you to--okay, yes. Please. Scratch my nose." And so she did.
We had hope right up until the end. At 11:30, when they were supposed to close down the gates, we still had hope. We thought maybe we'd get in at the last minute. No such luck. At noon, they finally shut the gate and there were still hundreds, maybe thousands of us, who never made it in. Security told us that there had been an equipment malfunction, even though we could see the x-ray machines through the fence and everything looked fine. They also told us that there had been too many tickets printed and they couldn't let everyone in. They also told us that things were just too chaotic and they thought they had let everyone in who had a ticket. Whatever the truth of the matter was, we didn't get in. It was disappointing, to say the least, after the months we spent working on the campaign and the weeks we waited to see if we would be given tickets and the hours we spent traveling to Washington and standing in line. But Mike Prusi, our state senator, didn't get in, either. Either did Jesse Jackson, who was in the same section we were in. Or the two elderly women with the walkers. Or the AP reporter who was in line near us, who had been sent there on assignment. So at least I was in good company.
As soon as we knew for sure we wouldn't get in, the crowd dissipated. Many ran toward the National Mall to try to get in on the last few minutes. Others ran to get a good place to watch the parade from. There were still several hundred people around, but it gave us some breathing room. As I was walking along the fence around the Capitol grounds trying to find a place I could hear President Obama's voice from, I suddenly heard it, clear as a bell. It was coming from a man's cell phone. He had, in desperation, called someone he knew who was watching it on TV, and they, in turn, had placed their phone next to the TV. There were about ten of us huddled around him listening to the speech on speakerphone. And as I looked around, there were groups of people all around us doing the same thing. There was a kind of poignancy to the moment. There were people in every group crying joyful tears and hugging each other.
It is a moment I will never, ever forget, as long as I live. It was history. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever been a part of.
But we'll start with first things first. Inauguration Day was one of the longest days of my life. It started when I woke up at 4:55. AM. 4:55 is, normally, more a bedtime for me than a time to get up. Ugh. I started off the day by showering in a dirty hotel room bathroom and then layering on my clothing. There were the usual underthings, of course, and then a pair of athletic socks which looked really sexy once I pulled on a pair of black nylons over them. I put on a turquoise thermal undershirt, then a silky gray long skirt and shirt that would serve to keep me warm and also to hide the fact that the dress I was wearing gapped a bit at the buttons. Then on went my red dress and a black sweater. I donned a pair of black tennis shoes that were salted gray from wearing them around at home all winter and a pair of gray fake pearl earrings. I looked like a homeless person, but at least I looked like a dressed up homeless person.
We drove the fifteen minutes or so to the train station, or at least to where my GPS told us the train station was. We found a parking garage and some train tracks, but no train station. Well, I saw what I thought might be a train station, but my opinion doesn't matter much to some people, so we went and parked in the garage and then asked someone where it was. And then someone else. And then... the fourth person we asked finally pointed us to a small structure across the street. I thought Camden Station was going to be a large one, because it had roughly ten times the parking that Penn Station had, and Penn Station was a pretty decent size. The parking mentioned on the website, however, was in a garage also used for parking at Orioles games. The station was a glass building between two sets of railroad tracks. It might have been twenty feet by ten feet. Maybe.
There were lines of people waiting outside and it took us five or ten minutes to be sure we were waiting in the correct line. There were people in line for the 7:00 train, the 7:20 train, and the 7:40 train, which was ours. We interviewed several policemen and people in each line before we were satisfied that we were in the right place.
Before I continue, I need to interject with a little side story. Chris, who rolled his eyes at me and teased me mercilessly for creating an itinerary for the trip, and who mentioned on a few separate occasions that it was ridiculous how I set everything I might need the following day out before I went to bed every night, forgot his coat. He put on his suit coat in the hotel room and walked out without his coat. It was about 15 degrees outside. So, the wait outside the train station was considerably longer for him than it was for me. He, at one point, was going to drive back to the hotel to get it, but he decided against it when I said if he didn't make it back in time, we could just watch the inauguration from our hotel. This incident helped shape the rest of the day for us. Okay, back to the story.
It was shortly after 7:40 when they organized us into a single file line and got us ready for our train. A police officer started yelling a woman's name, asking if she was in line. He found her almost immediately and then another woman, an older black woman with tears in her eyes, jumped out of line and thanked him. She had just wanted to make sure the other woman had her train ticket, she said, because the two of them had been separated. "She's gotta see it. She's gotta get there," the woman said loudly to everyone in line. "She has to. I don't care if I die tomorrow as long as I see that man put his black hand on the bible and take that oath!"
We boarded the train and started on our way. I tried a few times to make conversation with Chris, but I just gave up in the end because every time I opened my mouth, he either said something completely dismissive or just rolled his eyes at me. I get that he was pissy because he was cold, but civility is always a good thing to hold on to.
It was almost an hour before we pulled into Union Station. When we got off the train, the crowd of people rushing all in the same direction must have finally awakened a little excitement in Chris, because he got a tiny bit friendlier. As we were exiting the station, we saw a street vendor selling long-sleeved Obama t-shirts, so I stopped and bought one for Chris. I didn't really feel like spending the ten bucks, but he didn't have any cash at all and I didn't feel like having a horrible day listening to him bitch and bearing the brunt of his wrath. Ten minutes later, we saw a guy selling hoodies, so I bought him one of those, too. He put both of his shirts on under his suit coat and was finally warm enough to be nice for a while.
We followed the signs that pointed us in the direction of the Purple Gate line, since we had Purple Section tickets. What basically happened was that tens of thousands of people were funneled into an intersection flanked by the Mail Carriers' Association and the Home Loan Board buildings. The people in that area had purple, yellow, and silver tickets. There weren't really lines, though. I mean, the people with yellow tickets were all in what might be called a line, but it was several people thick and not in any real line shape, and they were intermingled with silver and purple ticket holders. We all recognized that we were in lines, but the lines were shoved together and twisted through each other and if you looked down from above, all you would have seen was a mob of thousands of people, not in any distinguishable lines at all.
From that point on, all we did was stand in "line." We moved a little bit, but I am not exaggerating when I said we moved fifty feet in two hours. And there were too many people for us to see why we weren't going anywhere. We met some cool people in line. Lots of other people who had worked on the campaign. One woman said she was in heaven because, like during the campaign, she was talking to hundreds of people about Barack Obama, but unlike during the campaign, she didn't have to convince a single one of them that he was a good guy. It was incredible to be surrounded by so many people; I've never even seen such a crowd in my life, much less been in one. It was even more incredible that they were all like-minded.
There were snipers on the top of every building I could see. It made me feel safe in some ways, of course, but it left me a little uneasy, too. If there was a need for a sniper, I figured, bad things were going to go down, because no one would be able to move to get away to safety. Besides that, I was mildly frightened that I or someone near me would, completely innocently, make a wrong move and get blown away. Luckily, that didn't happen. After a couple hours, though, some people did start getting restless. People were trying to leave our "line" and go figure out what was going on, but they weren't so much walking through the crowd. Instead, they were moving by hugging the person in front of them and then spinning to trade places with that person. That's how crowded it was. One woman, when she got to a tree, climbed it and tried to incite a riot by demanding that they let us in and encouraging us to take charge of the situation and MAKE them let us in. Luckily, no one took her too seriously.
Another guy climbed up into the tree when he got there, but for more innocent reasons. He just wanted to see if he could tell what was going on, because we were only 200 or so feet from the gate but we hadn't really moved in over an hour. That led to a rather interesting phone conversation between the man next to me and a friend he had gotten separated from. "Oh, you're by the Mail Carriers' building?" he asked. "I am too. No, not really. I have no idea what direction I am in from it because there are too many people for me to figure out where you are. Okay, wait. Do you see a guy in a tree? Yeah, that guy. I'm to his right."
It was incredible being a part of that line. I saw people talking down others who were struggling to convince us to get in by force. I saw people clearing the crowd away to the best of their ability to make things easy for a couple of elderly women who had been standing in line since 6 am with walkers. I saw a woman scratch another woman's nose for her. Yep, that's right. There was a woman who was making funny faces and sounds until someone asked her if she was okay. "Fine." she said. "It's just that my nose itches like hell and it's driving me crazy. I can't move my arms to scratch it. There's too many people." "Is there someone around who can scratch the lady's nose?" someone asked and we all laughed. "My boyfriend's right over there," she told us, nodding in the direction he was in, "But he can't reach me." Another woman asked her, "Do you want me to scratch it?" "Of course not. That's ridiculous. You're a stranger. I can't ask you to--okay, yes. Please. Scratch my nose." And so she did.
We had hope right up until the end. At 11:30, when they were supposed to close down the gates, we still had hope. We thought maybe we'd get in at the last minute. No such luck. At noon, they finally shut the gate and there were still hundreds, maybe thousands of us, who never made it in. Security told us that there had been an equipment malfunction, even though we could see the x-ray machines through the fence and everything looked fine. They also told us that there had been too many tickets printed and they couldn't let everyone in. They also told us that things were just too chaotic and they thought they had let everyone in who had a ticket. Whatever the truth of the matter was, we didn't get in. It was disappointing, to say the least, after the months we spent working on the campaign and the weeks we waited to see if we would be given tickets and the hours we spent traveling to Washington and standing in line. But Mike Prusi, our state senator, didn't get in, either. Either did Jesse Jackson, who was in the same section we were in. Or the two elderly women with the walkers. Or the AP reporter who was in line near us, who had been sent there on assignment. So at least I was in good company.
As soon as we knew for sure we wouldn't get in, the crowd dissipated. Many ran toward the National Mall to try to get in on the last few minutes. Others ran to get a good place to watch the parade from. There were still several hundred people around, but it gave us some breathing room. As I was walking along the fence around the Capitol grounds trying to find a place I could hear President Obama's voice from, I suddenly heard it, clear as a bell. It was coming from a man's cell phone. He had, in desperation, called someone he knew who was watching it on TV, and they, in turn, had placed their phone next to the TV. There were about ten of us huddled around him listening to the speech on speakerphone. And as I looked around, there were groups of people all around us doing the same thing. There was a kind of poignancy to the moment. There were people in every group crying joyful tears and hugging each other.
It is a moment I will never, ever forget, as long as I live. It was history. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever been a part of.
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