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It’s a good feeling to know you’re alive (On Obama, Hillary, and the joy of campaign swag)
My son Locklin loves swag. T-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, giant foam fingers. He's not picky. He's seven, he's American, he loves stuff. And so when I took him to an Obama rally in Pittsburgh a few months ago, I should have known.
"This man might be the next president of the United States," I'd said, patting my son's fuzzy crew cut head in a wise, motherly way. "You'll remember this forever."
I felt very pleased with myself.
"The popcorn was good," Locklin said later. "The pretzels needed more salt."
As for Obama, he said "He's nice, but he talked too much."
What Locklin really loved about the rally was the swag. Especially the hats.
"You're not going to let him wear that, are you?" my husband Dave said when Locklin and I came home wearing matching Obama baseball hats and campaign buttons.
"What do you mean?" I said, waving the Obama bumper sticker I planned to stick on our minivan, right where the Kerry Edwards sticker used to be.
"It's creepy, that's what," Dave said. "If you saw someone's kid walking around with 'NRA' on his hat, you'd think that was creepy, wouldn't you?"
"Sure," I said. "But this is different."
"How?" Dave said. "How is it different?"
"Easy," I said. "Obama's the good guy."
So there you have it. Those are my politics. They're not my son's, of course.
At seven, he's only starting to figure out what some of the fuss is about. On seeing a man with a sign that read "Homeless," Locklin said, "That's sad. Where does he sleep?" On hearing about someone in our town losing a house, he said, "That's sad. Everyone should have a house." On catching pundits arguing on CNN, one red-faced head screaming over another red-faced head, he said, "What's everybody so angry about?"
He's a smart kid.
Politics has nothing to do with it.
But the hat.
Last weekend, I took the kids to Idlewild Park. Idlewild Park is in Ligonier, Pa., deep in Westmoreland County. The day was hot, sunny. Locklin wore his hat. My four-year-old daughter Phelan wore a hat, too, a blue floppy number with a big white bow.
Phelan spent the day humiliating her big brother. She had a cold. She was tired. She's at the age where she wants to do everything, and most of it is too hard.
So she wept at the Fish Pond. She wailed when she didn't get a hole-in-one at golf. And she had to be escorted out of the bumper cars. She'd rammed only one other car before she got stuck in a corner. She spent the rest of the ride trying to spin back around. I stood on the other side of the rail and flailed my arms to show her how to turn the wheel. I jumped. I yelled, "You've got it, you've got it." When the bell rang, Phelan slumped over her steering wheel and cried until the attendant, a teenaged girl with a droopy ponytail and a face that said she'd rather spend next summer in algebra class, came over to carry her out.
"I can't, I can't do it," Phelan wailed, hopeless, heartbroken. The attendant sighed and handed her off to me.
"She's upset," the girl said. "It happens a lot."
"I'm so embarrassed," Locklin said, and pulled his hat down to his eyelashes. "I've never been so embarrassed in my life."
He didn't mean it, but it sounded good, like a teenager on TV or in a book or in the neighborhood, and he loved teenagers, the way they were cool, the way they complained and created drama.
To Phelan, Idlewild's Mister Rogers Neighborhood -- a life-sized replica complete with a bug-eyed gin-blossomed Lady Elaine, The Platypus family with their Scottish accents, and the vapid King Friday – is a must-see.
To Locklin, not so much.
"What if someone sees me here?" he said. "Someone from school?"
He looked around and pulled his hat lower until Obama 2008 fell right where his eyes used to be.
The trolley operator at Mister Rogers had a smile that was pressed and sharp, like her khakis. Her hair was short, spiked. When she clanged the bell, she threw her whole body into it, and all of us, kids and adults, ladies and gentlemen I presume, sat up straight and kept our hands inside the car at all times.
We'd waited almost an hour for the trolley. It was hot. There were bees. Even Ricky, the giant raccoon and park mascot, looked miserable. Ricky's tail was ratty. His head was on crooked. In between posing for pictures, he sat slumped over on a bench while the trolley operator, who doubled as Ricky's bodyguard, fended off a crowd of bored, groping kids.
"Be gentle with Ricky," Ms. Trolley yelled. "Don't pull Ricky's tail. Don't step on Ricky's feet. Don't poke Ricky's eyes out."
"Let's just go," Locklin said. "Forget this."
"Never," Phelan said. "Oh please."
So we'd waited our turn.
Before the trolley could go anywhere, there were safety checks. The trolley operator, who was probably having a bad day, who'd probably spent her whole summer summoning up the enthusiasm to say lines like "Correct as Usual Your Majesty," came through row by row, checking the chain locks. When she got to our row, she leaned in and frowned. She stepped back, then leaned in again and poked the brim on Locklin's hat. I was stunned. He was, too. He pushed the hat up so he could see. He looked confused.
"So," she said. "Obama, huh?"
He looked at her like she didn't make sense.
"Oh-bama," she said, and huffed.
"Sorry," I said, "he's seven." But she was talking to the hat.
"What about Hillary?" she said. "Shouldn't Hillary be his vice-president at least?"
Locklin shrugged.
"Wouldn't Hillary make a great vice president?" she said again. "Or president?"
"O.k.," my son said.
"He's seven," I said.
The woman looked at me like she hadn't noticed I was there.
"There's no way Obama can win," she said. "Not without Hillary. Just so you know."
She went on with her checks, row after row, then took her place up front. Her voice boomed through the trolley's loudspeaker.
"Do you know why," she asked, "our trolley goes forward, then back, then forward again?"
"To say hello and goodbye," a boy behind us yelled.
"That's right," she said, her voice flat. "Hello and goodbye."
"Why are people so angry?" Locklin had wondered over CNN.
It's something to think about.
He spun his hat around, b-boy style. I put my arm around him and pulled him close.
Politics have nothing to do with it.
"Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren't perfect." That's Mr. Rogers speaking.
What I want for my kids: Hope. Peace. Some days I think—know—politics have nothing to do with it, that everyone wants hope and peace for their kids. The woman who loves Hilary. The guy who is smart enough not to put a NRA hat on his kid. The lady stupid enough to put an Obama hat on hers.
The trolley operator threw the trolley into gear and clanged the bell. We went through a tunnel and there we were, in The Land of Make Believe, where everyone hugged and sang and loved each other very much.
3:27 PM
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