About a month ago, Bill Clinton spoke at my university to rally
Obama supporters. Yeah, this post is pretty late, but for the sake of
the historical record . . . .
8yo Emma and I attended this together. We spent hours waiting in the
heat, breathing exhaust from the news trucks and eyeballing the
sharpshooters that studied the crowd from various nearby perches.
Fortunately, she brought a book.
Unfortunately, the security people informed her that she wouldn't be
allowed to bring the book past the checkpoint. Apparently, they limit
items that can be thrown at the former president. She started to cry
when they told her, but we managed to smuggle the book in anyway but
jettisoning all replaceable items from my small purse (tissues, etc.)
and cramming it in. Then she spent most of the speech reading. That's
my girl.
Most exciting: seeing Bill from about 20 feet away. I thought I was too disgusted with him to be thrilled, but you know, he has that charisma. Middle-aged women must swoon everywhere he goes. The woman who introduced him was, um, not a thrilling speaker, and she didn't speak into the mike so it was almost impossible to understand her, but he smiled and nodded at her like she was the greatest thing ever. And then before he started his own speech, he thanked her for the intro and said that it was very hard to give an intro and she did a really good job.
And then he gave us almost the "full
Hammond" (as my husband calls it); no lip-biting that I saw, but finger wagging, homey Arkansas sayings, etc. He delivered his speech very well; it was clearly written out but it appeared that he was just speaking from the heart.
Most moving: One woman told me that her youngest son had recently been killed (hit by a car while crossing the street) and ever since then, her oldest son, 19yo, had lost all interest in things. He refused to apply for college, signed up for comm college b/c she made him but refused to actually go, and has been hanging out with a bad crowd saying nothing matters anyway. She said that she looked around and realized that the world is moving on, even though her baby was killed, and that she needs to move on with life, and she thinks the country needs to move on and change too, and that's why she is supporting Obama--because she wants her life to change so bad. She has gone back to school. She is hoping that Obama inspires her son. For all these reasons, she really wanted one of the "Change We Can Believe In" signs and they didn't seem to have enough for the crowd . . . but she finally managed to get one.
Other people were also very interesting but her story made the biggest impact on me.
Most surreal: the electronic devices. We were all crammed together, shoulder to shoulder, while nearly everyone continually held a cell phone, camera, or some such item aloft. It must be very weird to speak at these events and look out over a vast sea of little silver boxes. In fact, more than once I heard people yelling for others to lower their "Yes We Can" signs so as not to block the shot.
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