It snowed on Election Day 1992. I remember this because I had to walk about a mile to the polls to vote. It was my first time voting in a presidential election. Sure, I had voted in the primaries but it didn’t seem to count as much. At least it didn’t count in my head.

So on that snowy November night when my shitty car was in the shop and I was unable to find a ride, I bundled my ass up and walked the mile or so to the polls so I could vote. I was like the Post Office, yo. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night. . . ”

You know what almost stopped me from completing my appointed round? An eighty-something-year-old election volunteer.

See? I was so alit from within by the power of democracy. So giddy about the chance to exercise my right to vote. So filled with hope that we could get Bush the First outta office and replace him with Bill Clinton that I could not shut the fuck up. Not at all.

Apparently talking about who you’re going to vote for and why, and asking the people standing in line what they thought of Hilary and Al is considered “campaigning at the polls” and that’s a big no-no. I had no idea. I don’t remember anyone telling me anything about campaigning at the polls.

Old Lady White Hair told me “If you don’t stop campaigning at the polls we’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“But, I’m not campaigning,” I said.
“You can’t talk about the candidates at the polls,” she said. “It’s against the law.”
“Oh,” I said, and promptly shut my yap.

To this day I have no idea if that’s true or not. What I do know is that I didn’t say a peep for the rest of the time I was at the polls. I was pretty certain Old Lady White Hair could take away my vote. After all she’d probably been voting since Millard Fillmore was elected and knew whatfor about the rules and regulations of voting.

I voted for Bill Clinton on that snowy night in 1992 and tonight as I watch him address the Democratic National Convention I feel like that stupid, giddy, optimistic twenty-year-old lit from within by the power of democracy. Judging by the tweets flitting across my Twitter client, the entirety of Generation X feels the same way. And I love that. LOVE IT! If I could, I would hug the entirety of GenX right now.

While I know that the National Conventions are nothing more than political theater and pageantry, I don’t care. I love them. I love them more than Pretty Little Liars and reruns of A Different World combined.