Election Day

It is 7 am and I just got home from my voting site. No, I didn't vote, because the line was so dramatically long. I was hoping to go baby free, but I suppose I will have to wait until later as there was no way I would have been out of there before Jimmy has to leave for work.

I am intentionally posting this before any election results are announced. Who "wins" isn't going to change what I have learned during this election.

(And, let me preface this by saying that I personally cannot stand to see little children influenced by their parents when it comes to politics or the like. I used to have a man come into the Sunday school class that I taught and put political pins on all of the 4 year olds. When he left, I would promptly remove them. If a child really understands and wants to take a stand, fine, but I don't believe in forcing them or in the parent talking up their own viewpoints so much so that the child is a walking imitation of them. And, this is why I have tried to avoid this, myself.)

We have all heard that a person needs a positive role model. I haven't really felt that way in my own life, other than family role models. I honestly don't think that any celebrity, politician, or likewise is any better than any of us who don't have as prestigious careers. So, until last week, I didn't realize the impact that a person, with whom you identify with, can have.

Many of you know that Jackson has struggled with the concept of "bad" people. We once saw a man whom I suspected of stealing a purse. Now, to Jackson, every person that he sees who looks anything like this man is a terrifying "bad guy". The fact that this guy happened to be African American didn't help. (Last week, Jackson was in the car with Jimmy and my father when they were hit by someone who didn't even stop. Jimmy ran up to the car at a light. When Jimmy returned, Jackson's first question was, "Was that bad guy brown?" (Luckily, he wasn't.)) So you can see the impact that this one purse snatching kid who, apparently, had long hair, wore his hat backwards, and had on a skeleton shirt has had on my son some two years later. (The police really should employ Jackson to witness crimes as he seems to remember details quite well.)

Fast forward a few days to the night when Barrack Obama put his infamous infomercial on all of the major networks. Jackson snuck out of bed and we decided not to make a big deal of it, but quiet was the rule. A little into the show, Jackson said, "This is a pretty good show, I thought it would be boring." (OK, impressive that the five year old thinks that Obama's plan for the nation is interesting enough to watch.) As he watched there were pictures of Obama and his white mother, Obama and his black father, etc. A little while later he said, "He has the same skin as me." Then something began to happen. By the end of the show, he was completely relating to this man who just might become the president. "Did he ever get embarrassed when he was little?" "Did a bully ever pick on him?" "Did he ever get scared?"

As I thought about what I had just witnessed, I realized that maybe the reason that I haven't believed the hype about having good role models out there is because I have role models that look like me all around. (And I have to say that with Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin in the limelight lately, it does in some way make me feel like I can do more.)

So here is to all of the good people in the world, especially Barrack Obama, who has made my little guy see that there are good people doing wonderful things for the world that look "just like" him. And, should he become our next President, I know that I will be praying for him to be able to withstand the negatives of which so many of our former Presidents have succumbed. He will have generations of an entire race, as well as lots of others, counting on him to be a positive role model. I hope he can stand up to the pressure.