I was there! Obama’s acceptance speech
In a previous post, Hope and Change for the Future, I wrote about my experience making signs for the Democratic National Convention. 
At the time I was very overwhelmed by the experience and excited about the chance to attend Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. However, there was a lot of confusion going on, and we weren’t really sure whether we were actually going to get tickets or not. A couple days before the speech, I got a call saying I could pick up my tickets the next morning. Since the entire operation seemed to be pretty disorganized, I made my way down to the union office bright and early. Thank goodness I did! I picked up my and my husband’s tickets right before I heard someone say “the interns called the wrong people last night…” EEK! I already had my ticket in hand, and had picked up the union T-shirts they wanted us wear. I practically RAN out of the place! I didn’t want them to take the tickets away. As soon as I got home, I logged into the community site and claimed our tickets. WHEW! Now they wouldn’t be able to take them away from us.
The morning of the speech we left early because we knew there were going to be 70,000 people attending and we wanted to stay out of lines as much as possible (yea right).
I went with two of my cousins (one happens to be my baby sitter as well) and Eva’s daddy. The only lines we really had to wait in was while we waited for the gates to open. We were so early that security was quick and when we got into the stadium it was empty! (Even though it was empty, I still managed to literally run right into the 9 News team). We had a great time roaming the stadium and checking out all the shwag. We figured that we already looked silly enough wearing our bright yellow-orange T-shirts that we might as well get every button, sticker, hat, etc. that we could find. I think I did pretty good, and had plenty of “flare”!
As the day wore on, the stadium really started to fill up. It was exciting to see all the smiles on people’s faces. I heard rumors of people waiting in line for 4 hours to get in, but I didn’t hear one person complain (of course I waited a total of 30 minutes!). The vibe of the entire stadium was of pure excitement. I noticed that people were chatting with their neighbors as if they were long, lost friends. It was amazing to see the entire crowd rooting for the same team. Normally, at a football game, most of the fans are for one team or the other. And when your team is losing, the crowd gets crazy… yelling, drunkenness, rudeness, etc. Not here. Not now! There was a buzz in the air. People were laughing, smiling, dancing, clapping, cheering and helping one another. For example, at one point in the day we came back to our seats with our arms full of food. The guy behind us reached forward and pulled our seats down so we could sit. I guarantee that wouldn’t happen at a Bronco’s game!
Favorite shirt of the day: “Burritos for Obama” from Qdoba
Favorite sign of the day: “Obamalicious Bar-B-Que Sandwiches”
Throughout the day, there were bands playing, and speakers talking about why they were voting for Barack Obama. It was fun to see Stevie Wonder, Al Gore, and all the real people who came out to speak. I got goosebumps many times during the day for different reasons. It was just such a feeling of excitement. And not like the excitement you get before you go to a concert, or before you get a book signed by an incredible woman (yay Hillary!). It was different. It was the feeling that all the crap that we’ve been dealing with for 8 very long years is about to come to an end.
Obama didn’t come on stage until around 8pm that night, but hanging out with family and being a part of that amazing crowd for over 8 hours was worth it! It was a night that I will never forget and I’m grateful to have had the chance to attend such a historic event.
I have been trying to write this post for almost 2 weeks now. Every time I sit down at the computer to try to put my experience into words, I come up blank! The other day I realized that the reason this has been so difficult to write is that I have wanted to keep the experience to myself. It was such an amazing day, that I didn’t really want to share it with the rest of the world. The entire day moved me. But I realized it was time to open myself up.
Also, this is post is about my experience that day. I didn’t want to give a play by play of the day, plenty of other bloggers and reporters have already covered that.
But that got me thinking again, why does Roger (my brother) enjoy riding motorcycles? Is it a guy thing, maybe partly. But this is the same guy who sends me all sorts of political emails bashing Obama. Roger is not a huge McCain fan, but is a republican. Living in Arizona, he’s wasn’t a McCain supporter early on, but now he has to be because he’s a republican. In fact when he called while I was home he asked me what I thought of Palin. All I could say (remember I’m the one who doesn’t like to debate) was “She certainly took the spotlight away from Obama and the DNC in a hurry.” That was my nice noncommittal answer. But I did say they are going to have to stop showing her shooting a gun to get women votes. At least in my opinion. But I digress….
