I Should Have Known

It would have been hard for the boys not to start asking questions about the elections, given the level of discourse around them. Clarke, of course, took it all in stride. Interested but pretty passive. Asks a few questions and then he's out. Oscar, on the other hand, I should have been more careful with. As regular readers (and oscar's many fans through the country) know, he is a math whiz and slightly obsessive, compulsive. I believe an insensitive soul may have once referred to him as a "cracked out investment banker". I should have known how he'd react to elections, given how I've seen him analyze Yankees baseball. I ignored the warning signs: the tell tale Jim Lehrer News Hour on when I came into the room, his new home page set to NYTimes.com Election Guide, his insistence on going to the voting booth with Joe. It all became clear to me on Super Tuesday, when he was glued to the TV, with the laptop on his lap, clicking between CNN and NYTimes. He wolfed dinner and did a countdown, New Year's Eve style, to the first poll closing in Georgia. Things devolved from there, as poor Clarke wandered in to comment that Obama was losing Missouri. Oscar practically tackled him yelling, "they haven't even gotten results from St. Louis yet. He's going to surge with the urban vote." Yes, he used the word surge. He had a pencil out and was adding delegates, reading the laws on super delegates, and clicking county by county maps for updates. He was impossible to get to bed, even yelling for updates from his bed. He finally fell asleep and I started dreading the next morning when I'd have to drag him out of bed, exhausted. What was I thinking? 6am the next morning, blurry-eyed Oscar, crawled into my bed demanding, "How did it go in California?"

I am worried that he cares too much. I am worried that we haven't peppered him with enough cynical pragmatism about our country, how he probably knows more about the process than most Americans. Should we have told him that Joe and I are normally laughing at the debates and were members of Kerry Haters for Kerry? He has leapt onto our hope bandwagon and I hope our worried planner can survive the mean streets of politics.

As for us, we are more fired up than ever. Care to donate to Obama? http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/bridgetwi
We are heading up to the barn this weekend to ready the house for the onslaught of Cheeseheads next week. I want to start planning my Saranac Lake fundraiser but not even sure I'll have time in the short weekend. We promise not to ski and be diligent about organizing the house. We promise not to ski and be diligent about organizing the house. We promise not to ski and be diligent about organizing the house.....