It was midnight—very late for any ten-year-old to be awake watching TV. My parents must not have had a problem with me being up since they were both sitting around the living room with me, not saying a word. About a thousand miles south, millions of Floridian votes were being tallied, re-tallied, and tallied some more. Chads were dimpled and hanging and the people of the United States were hanging in the balance all the same. I sat staring while my father flipped through the sea of identical network news channels. I stared deep into the red-green-blue of the photons pouring out of television and transforming into bar graphs and percentages and thousands of statistics all trying to answer the same question: Gore or Bush? My father turned to me and made one of the most prophetic statements I’ve ever heard. He said “pay close attention now—you’re watching history here.”
Before 2000, the only President I had known was Bill Clinton. Things had always seemed great during his eight-year term, and I was completely oblivious to any issues in political affairs. The laughably thin Time Magazine for Kids that we read in class every week only showed pictures of Clinton shaking hands with Yasser Arafat or some other world leader I was vaguely familiar with. The worst thing that I recall happening during the Clinton administration was the Lewinsky scandal. I remember piecing together scraps of headlines as I walked down the sidewalk and stepped over tattered leaflets of the Starr Report while the few colors of their ink ran down into the city streets. I remember seeing cartoon parodies on Saturday Night Live where George Bush Sr. would pop into frame holding forensic evidence of Clinton’s misdeeds with Monica. I didn’t understand the finer details of the joke, but I had my guesses. I remember asking, “Mom, can you explain this to me or is this something I’m too young to get?” She looked at me and started laughing.
The promising and carefree Clinton years that ran the course of my childhood represented the childhood of a new America. Next came Bush’s first years, which felt like a troublesome adolescence—one that was perfectly in sync with my own. I was a fresh-faced eleven-year-old at a new school in lower Manhattan. I didn’t quite look the same, sound the same, or feel the same about the world around me. It was the first time I had to make new friends since I was a 6 (and this time, girls counted too). The transition had its ups and downs, but all were fairly superficial. I had to get used to calling English “Humanities.” I had to date all my work as 2001, laughing every time I wrote the number on paper. It felt like I was living in the future. I had survived the dreaded Y2K and was living in a new millennium, although the world didn’t quite live up to the Jetsons’ model.
The first day of middle school was tough, but not as tough as the third day. I had my first “drama” class, and our teacher was showing us how to meditate. I was lying on an auditorium stage, counting my breaths, trying to exhale the nervous energies building inside of me. Even in the silence, I didn’t hear the screaming. I just heard the sound of my breath, in and out. Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the cafeteria impatiently waiting for my father to pick me up. I was sitting by myself, forced to acknowledge the awkwardness of adolescence. The turning point of the century was taking place less than a mile away and I was sitting at the lunch table doodling cartoons of airplanes circling the city. No one told me what had really happened, I didn’t know any better. But whether I wanted to or not, I would have to catch up. Breathing out the bad would not be so easy.
I suppose I will never be able to tell if it was my coming of age or the orange alert level that made the outside world so suddenly relevant. Perhaps it was both at once. Perhaps America and I had changed together. I was the minute hand, ticking in tandem with the hour hand of the nation. Although my cycle would finish quicker, we were still moving together. I went to high school, America went to war. I pursued a future in economics, America’s economic future became uncertain. It was never the easiest relationship, but I stuck with it. I couldn’t be a spectator any longer, and fortunately, I didn’t want to be one. When the time came, I cast my vote. For the first time, I told America how I felt—and she listened. “For that is the true genius of America – that America can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”
It was around midnight—a very late time for any fourteen-year-old to be awake watching TV. My parents must not have had a problem with me being up since they were all sitting around the living room with me, calling their friends and family. America had made up its mind again, but the future was less certain. CNN was asking all of Washington for answers, including a young black senator with a curious name. “Who is he?” I asked. My father turned to me and made one of the most prophetic statements I’ve ever heard. He said “Watch this guy—he may be president next time around.”
Four years into the future, central time, I am standing in Grant Park, Chicago. I am eighteen. I am a college student entering a new phase of life—adulthood. I’m surrounded by people I haven’t known for very long, but I feel comfortable. I feel independent and dependent all at once. I am changing, and so is America. The clock strikes right on the hour. Thousands of miles west, millions of Californian votes have been tallied. I am breathing heavier than I was 7 years before, but this time, I hear the screaming. I’m in the center of the hugs, the cheers, the jumps, and the tears. I’ve changed a lot, and I know America will be changing with me. But this time, I’m not just watching it—I’m living it.