Today is Barack Obama day!

Actually, November 4th was Barack Obama day according to my son Ryan. He went around telling everyone with ears to hear him that the election was going to be won by Barack Obama because he is "awesome" and "not John McCain". I would like to stress the fact that while his mother and I are flaming liberals and were totally behind Obama from the start, we rarely discussed politics when the kids were around. Not because we were trying to hide anything from them, but because any time we try and talk about something other than Ethan's dinner, Ryans trains, Ryan's current level of dissatisfaction with the proximity of his younger brother to said trains, or candy, we get interrupted about every 2.4 seconds with one or the other of the boys interjecting "Mom! Dad!" or "Eeegh! Ake!" depending on the age and vocabulary of the one doing the interrupting. This makes it all the more surprising that Ryan became a huge fan of our president-elect.

I was first made aware of his love for Obama when we accidentally found ourselves at a "NObama" rally held outside the local Barnes and Nobel store. As we drove up to the parking lot of the bookstore, I noticed a bus plastered with pictures of McCain and Palin and a few hundred people surrounding it. A womans voice was clearly audible even from where we parked, and I thought it sounded like the woman herself, Sarah Palin. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to go hear her speak, so I grabbed Ethan in my arms and the three Doyle boys set out to attend our first political rally as a family.

About 50 yards from the stage, the speaker said something, I forget what, that made it clear that it was not actually Sarah Palin speaking. (In hindsight it is obvious that there is no way in hell she would have been out in a parking lot in Illinois that close to the election, but the person speaking really sounded like her.) I decided that if we weren't going to hear Palin speak that we would just head into the bookstore as we had planned. On the way back to the store, Ryan asked some questions.

"What were those people doing there, Dad?"

"They were having a political rally," I said.

Ever the curious one, he asked, "What is a rally?"

"A rally is when people who all believe the same thing get together and cheer each other on."

"Like at the Fire games?" Thats my boy...way to bring it back to soccer!

"Yep, except at this rally the people are not cheering for a team, they are cheering against a person."

A confused look crossed his face. "Who are they cheering against?"

"They don't like Barack Obama and would rather see John McCain elected president. They are cheering against Obama and the things he wants to do as president."

And then, with no prompting whatsoever, he says, "Well that's stupid. Barack Obama is going to win. He is totally awesome."

And with that my son made his first correct political prediction, and election day (and each subsequent day) became "Barack Obama Day".

Let's just hope that Ryan is correct about Obama being "awesome" as well.