Last night's South Park send-up of McCain and Obama was pretty white-bread stuff, but I have to admit I identified with the b-plot about Stan's dad. Although I avoided his drunken antics, I still woke up on Wednesday morning only to find that much of the joy and ebullience of the night before was gone. Everything's changed. Nothing's changed.
After weeks, months, and years of dealing with the ups and downs of the election, when 11 p.m. came and we had finally won I knew that everything was going to be different. Our eight year nightmare was finally over. Tears welled. Pride surged. Joy.
By 6 a.m., change seemed to have skipped my house. My problems are still here. I still have to worry about my job, pay bills, deal with debt, try to ignore the shimmy in my car's suspension, wonder why my son won't ride his bike, and deal with all the subtle negotiations of being married. And all of those shitty life details have only gotten worse after taking a good week off of life to monomaniacally monitor every facet of the election.
I voted for change, but somewhere along the line I kind of got confused and thought that the change that was coming would be immediate and life-altering. Maybe Barack would come to my house and hang for a while, give me some advice, and issue a Presidential order invalidating all the mistakes I've made through 37 years of living an average life. Not so much.
If the country get's a fresh start after eight years of hell, where's my clean slate? Maybe I should have elected someone who promised to make my problems go away, instead of someone who wants to deal with our nation's difficulties.
So yeah, kudos to all of us who wanted Obama to win. I'm overjoyed. Pardon me while I go back to slogging through the muck of human existence. Yes I can.
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2008.