inauguration 2013: jammies edition

Waiting to get home after Inauguration 2009: Not doing that again.

If you're reading this, it means that like me, you have chosen to spend this Inauguration Day inside, near the heat and the television. And while the Post found folks from East County who chose to go downtown anyway, they found others to show that you and I are not alone in celebrating the democratic process in our jammies.

(Or, not celebrating. My almost-fourteen-year-old brother left the TV room in a huff, grumbling, "It's a black guy. I don't care. I don't have to care for four more years." Are kids really that nonchalant about having transcended the barrier of race? Is this a good thing?)

I'd briefly entertained the idea of going this year, but then I remembered the last one: the cold, the crowds, getting cussed out for asking two drunk men to quiet down so I could hear the president talk, and the five-hour trip home, which involved walking twenty-three blocks out of the way to find an open Metro station and then waiting out the cold and the long line in a Safeway in Southwest while people looted.

After all of that, I concluded that we can only elect the first black president once, and even though they're expecting a third as many people as in 2009, I decided that I could wait for the election of the first female president, or the first Hispanic president, or the first of anything else, before willingly enduring that again.