Holding our breath

Trey Ellis on the interminable wait from Election Night to Inauguration Day, and a childhood dream nearly fulfilled:

I think between now and that moment I will set the world record for breaths held.

"What a long, strange trip it's been." I'm just a year younger than Obama and when I was a kid daydreaming about the 21st century I imagined people zipping to work with personal jetpacks, levitating cars and ninety-year-olds looking like twenty-year- olds in his and hers spandex jumpsuits. I imagined x-wing starfighters and demolecularizing transporters and phasers I could set to stun.

What I never imagined was a black President. On Star Trek, yes the world was multi-racial, but Kirk was still king.

These almost two years of the Obama candidacy rewrote the book. Barack Obama is the Seabiscuit of our generation. The absurd long shot who reminds us of the power of even our most ridiculous dreams.

At 30, I came along roughly a generation later than Ellis. And for all the progress made in our country during that time, even I never dreamed up a scenario in which America elected a black president. Maybe I'm a victim of my own limited imagination. Or maybe I believed too strongly in our past. Whatever the case, the idea of a black Commander-in-Chief made for mediocre movies and easy jokes (about 2:50), but nothing approaching an honest possibility.

I'll still have to see it to believe it. I can only imagine how apprehensive folks like Ellis and my father must be.

On another note, how much of a failure must modern society be to the creative folks of Hanna-Barbera? I've never lived in Orbit City, never driven an aerocar and Lola is nothing like Astro.

Then again, sometimes I do feel like I work for Spacely Space Sprockets.

(Dap to AN)