Anniversary (From Western Telegraph)

Anniversary

11:23am Wednesday 4th November 2009

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A year ago today, the internet reliably informs me (I'm not so good at remembering dates), Obama was elected.

Being somewhat ignorant, I'm not going to get into the political stuff that's happened since then, I'm just enjoying remembering how I felt when I heard the news.

Embarrassingly enough, my mum, my sister and I all failed to stay up and watch the election results, while my gran, who is in her 80s, did. Oops. Anyway, I woke up the following morning when The Boy got up for work at about 8am.

I can remember this feeling that something important was happening and almost immediately remembering what it was and turning the TV on. Of course, that's all anyone was talking about that day, so I found out straight away. It was almost euphoric. The Boy was quite bemused as I sat up in bed grinning and trying to articulate my excitement. I may have shouted a bit. To be fair, it is very unusual for me to show any kind of awareness in the morning; excitement is pretty much unheard of.

Generally, world politics annoy me when I hear about the bad stuff, but I don't feel very attached to other countries in terms of their elections and that kind of thing. But when Obama was elected it felt like the world was involved. We all wanted a bit of the USA's happiness.

I don't think I'll forget how I felt at that moment. It was a mixture of hope and relief and simple pleasure. When I'd had time to process the information more fully, I realised that I was experiencing a bit of history. How often can you say that with any confidence? One day, I hope I'll be able to tell my grandchildren about how I found out that America had elected its first black president.