I think maybe I died and someone forgot to tell me.
I had my phone interview this afternoon at 4:30 PM with Students for Saving Social Security. I worked really hard to be impressive. I talked about writing for the Setonian, and learning the ropes of College Republicans, and how I know what I believe so now I need to learn how to translate it into activism. The person I spoke to was the national director of the organization, and he's from Pittsburgh and is friends with the chair of the St. Vincent College Republicans chapter (a very nice boy who dressed up in a gorilla suit and carried a sign that said, "I'm bananas for Rick Santorum" when we went to heckle Bob Casey at his midnight rally in Greenburg last October. It takes all kind to make a world.) I was scared peeless the entire time. (An hour and a half before I'd been lying face-down on Cayla's bed practically choking on my own spit in fear.) I didn't think i said anything stunningly brilliant.
Mr. Mark Harris of Students for Saving Social Security let me choke almost all the way until the end of our thirteen-minute conversation before dropping, so casually that at first I thought I'd heard him wrong, that they wanted me for the communications position.
He wants me to spend my summer doing press releases and blogging and fun stuff like that. He gave me until the end of the week to consider. I didn't need that time. I accepted before he could take his next breath.
I think I remembered to say something intelligent and gracious. My mouth dropped open so far that I nearly swallowed the phone. I became dimly aware that I was shaking like an addict coming down from a high.
A year ago I don't think I realized that people would be willing to pay me for my political geekery. I know this is a cliche, but I find that cliches become so by being utterly true. I feel like everything in entire my life has been leading me to one moment this afternoon, with Mr. Mark Harris on the phone talking about morning staff meetings and the business-casual dress code and completely failing to realize that he might as well have just told his new intern that she'd won the lottery.
I got the position because Mr. Mark Harris thinks I'm good with words, but I don't have the words to describe how great is the gift that has fallen into my lap. My whole life has been getting me ready for this moment....Growing up with Dad's beloved talk radio piped through the car everywhere we went. Arguing with Mrs. Wheeler in ninth grade Honors Government. Finding Mr. Shewell's door open every day at lunch and going in just to eat from his jumbo jar of pretzels and listen to him talk. Taking time out from the closest thing to a decent relationship I ever had to go down to the Victory Center the day before the election last fall and make phone calls until I could recite the pitch in my sleep. I want to go hug every social studies teacher I have ever had.
And jeez, so much uncertainty-bordering-on-fear. Last summer when I told Dad I was dropping education certification and picking up political science he didn't talk to me for three days. I think he still thinks I'm chasing the moon. This afternoon I would have sworn that the moon itself was hanging right outside my window and all I had to do was throw open the curtains and reel it in.
This summer I'm going to be working three and a half blocks from the White House. As in, I walk down the stairs and out the door and three and a half blocks and I am standing in front of the President's house. I can take my ham on wheat and a Capri Sun and sit down on a bench and eat lunch every day while I watch the Secret Service agent posted on the roof.
Tidbit: I am fascinated by the Secret Service. The whole organization thrills me. In the plainest language I can find, They get shit done.
This summer, I'm going to get shit done.
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
-Eleanor Roosevelt
"The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits, not animals....There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
-Winston Churchill
"This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves....You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down -- up to man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course....You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."
-Ronald Reagan, October 27, 1964