Out Of Bed

Last night I rode the scooter home through the dark streets of Smallish City shortly before midnight. Along every block of downtown, block after block, youngish people were pouring out into the streets, laughing, hooting, howling, jumping up and down. It looked, pretty much, as if the Red Sox had just won the World Series-- except that instead of screaming "Red Sox, #1!", they were screaming "Obama won! Obama is our next president!". Several of them approached me at stop lights to shout the news, in case I hadn't heard. One fellow jumped off the sidewalk and held up his hand to give me a flying high-five as I sped by. It was quite a scene.

I'm proud that young people, minority people, unwealthy people, female people-- in short, the previously disenfranchised people-- of this country turned out to elect this man. I am proud, and hopeful, and excited. I got out of bed (yes, I had already voted) and I'm not moving to Canada (quite yet.)

But when I look at the breakdown in the voting statistics (and you know I can't resist such things), I get uneasy and feel alienated. If this election had been left to people in any one way visibly like me-- Caucasian, or over 40, or male, or in my tax bracket* (let alone all of those combined), Obama would have been handily defeated. This makes me feel ever more the oddity-- a person who doesn't resemble the crowd he supports, and doesn't agree with the crowd he resembles. Sometimes I wonder if this is just a stupid personality trait of mine, this refusal to go with the flow, to do what I'm supposed to. I don't know.

I console myself with thinking that if anyone collected data on the presidential preference of "People from households with one or more cats", that might show a different pattern. Also of some consolation is that the income bracket above me actually voted for Obama. There is some hope.