Election Reflection

The only reflection I care to make about the current election is, "Thank God, it's over!" (Specifically referring to the campaign season, in case there was any question.)

But I can reflect with some nostalgia, related only to the marking of time, on some past elections:

• The first current event/news item I recall being aware of and (nominally) understanding was the 1984 presidential campaign. I turned five a couple months before the election. I knew who Reagan was, and, rather morbidly for a kindergartner, remember knowing that he had been shot at some point.
  


• The '88 election happened when I was in the fourth grade, and we did an election cycle simulation in class. The candidates were dinosaurs. The parties were Carnivore and Herbivore. I campaigned for Triceretops (A Cabbage In Every Pot). I don't recall who won. I do recall that my teacher wore yellow eye shadow.
  


• We were living in Italy at the time of the 1992 election, and our Italian landlord and his, erm, dubiously connected family showed up at our front door at around 7:00 the morning after, bewildered and asking how on earth Bill Clinton had won the election. I still don't know what he found so puzzling about it - they were definitely expressing confusion, not disapproval.
  


• 1996 was the fall of my senior year of high school. We were living outside San Francisco at the time. The political climate of that part of the universe really can't be accurately described using only the written word. I got into a mischievous habit of rhapsodizing about the brilliance of Joseph McCarthy in my civics class just to horrify my peers. Fortunately, the teacher, who couldn't have leaned any farther left without actually standing on his head, got a kick out of it. At the same time, I was driving my mother's '67 Mustang to school each day. Great car, but it had a dinky AM radio that only received KSFO. Let me just tell you, if you've got a taste for the utterly bizarre, you must sample San Francisco-based conservative talk radio.
  


• The first presidential election in which I was old enough to vote was in 2000. One of my iconic memories of my college years is of sitting on my roommate's bed (she was from Florida, ironically), watching the NBC news on her computer until the small hours of the morning, cooing maternally over how pathetically exhausted all the poor anchors looked in rolled-up shirt sleeves and tie-less.
  


• I watched the late coverage of the 2004 election in an empty hotel bar in Cambridge, where I'd gone to meet up with a college friend who was in town on business. All ideological considerations aside, I'm absolutely certain, that, had Senator Ketchup won that one, I would have been driven certifiably insane within two years by the news media's incessant crooning over how young John Edwards is! I certainly hope I receive that kind of affirmation when I'm 51...
  


• Speaking of Mr. Edwards, the gentleman he succeeded in the Senate has the Best Name Ever.
  

• 2008, it seems, will go down in history as the year I got sicker than a dog, left work at 10 am, and therefore got to vote with all the senior citizens, hoping my vision was straight enough that I actually voted for my intended candidates. On the other hand, I stopped being able to tell most of the candidates apart months ago. (My dad's line: "McCain is the guy who hangs out with that lady who looks like your mom." Which hadn't occurred to me before, but...she kinda does.)

Happy election day. I'm going back to bed now.