capture the flag

Raise your hand if you played capture the flag as a kid.
Alright, everyone. Good.
In any round of capture the flag worth playing, there's a moment where one entire team is trapped on the other side, save one person. Their fingertips barely maintain contact with the tree deemed "jail" in order to extend their limbs to a maximum point, hoping this gives the only 8 year old left on their home side a better chance of tagging them free. Or they link arms, forming a chain from the tree, which generally causes consternation and philosophical debate on what contact is and if you are really touching the tree by the transitive property that you are touching someone who is touching the tree.
Point being.
You're all trapped at that tree, staring at that the kid on the other side. Now it's usually the smallest one, so he's fast, but he's also that loser who never even gets close to the line and doesn't have the hand/eye coordination to pull the flag of any intruder, even though he can outrun them easily. But he's played a few times now, made a few glory moves, learned from the couple of 10 year olds passing on their wisdom and strategy, and so there's a chance. It's slim, but hey, the kid might just have what it takes to free the other side.
And it feels like you've been standing at the tree FOREVER.
"Just run!"
"Get us out!"
"Just get caught and get it over with!"
But that kid wants to prove himself.
And in most cases, he doesn't. I mean I was usually that kid, so I know the feeling well. You think you're coming to your glory moment as you decide, "This is my time! I will blaze through the army of pre-teens and free all my teammates who will then love me and invite me to all the cool parties and maybe let me sit with them at LUNCH!"

The only difference is, this time it actually worked. He actually made it to the glory moment. Barack Obama got across the line, beat back the defenders, faced the odds, and freed everyone at the tree. That's the only way to describe the feeling I had as people poured out of dorms and bars, windows and doors, to flood the streets of DC screaming, crying, hugging, and chanting: "Yes we did!" That I'd been standing, trapped at this tree for years with everyone I knew. We'd resigned ourselves to losing, to being cornered and powerless forever. And this rookie with unlikely prospects didn't hope he'd free us, he decided to. There was no room for loss. This was going to be the moment. And it was. We ran back to our side of the field completely elated, without regard to who was what status on our team, but overjoyed that we finally had a fighting chance again, that we were reunited, and we had this kid to thank for it.

There's another recognizable moment after this one. It comes just after the pure, unabashed, uncontrollable joy. Real prisoners who have been let out of a jail with real bars have said the same thing: when you get into the real world, you're not sure how to react. When you're back in the game, there's this moment where you're not even sure what to do with the joy, and with the opportunity you've been given. The reason I haven't blogged about this until now is because having all this totally pure joy at something I cannot physically touch or interact with or feel the immediate benefits of, having joy because of an electoral count, because of something I've never really cared about until now, was almost uncomfortable. I didn't know what to do with all this happiness for something that always seemed so distant from my personal life. With this past week, I've settled into a comfortable, confident hope that things will be better in the next four (and hopefully eight) years. Not just for my country, but for me and my family on a personal level. I was able to assign that happiness a physical cause, and now, I can focus on doing my part to help my team get the flag, to not get caught, to put forth the best effort to win.

5th grade politics never fails to comfort me.