We won!! We—oh wait

What just happened?

Mood

At about 8:30 last night I came barging into our house after a day spent at my Home Depot job saying things like, “Try aisle 9,” and, “I think those things are probably over that way somewhere. Happy hunting!”

“Whoo-hoo!” I cried, tossing my lunch bag wherever it landed. “Time to watch the awesome Ms. Harris trump Trump!”

“Already on it,” said my wife, Cat, who was curled up under a blanket on the couch. “Want some popcorn?”

“I do!” I said.

“Great!” she said. “Make me some, too.”

Cat thinks that joke is funny every time she makes it—despite the fact that my response to it is always exactly the same. I make us popcorn.

Which is wrong. I shouldn’t encourage her. But, you know. Popcorn.

It wasn’t long till I was on the couch beside her, gargantuan popcorn bowl in hand, manically anticipating all the fun about to unfold.

Ninety minutes later I was so depressed I had to go to bed.

Three hours later I climbed groggily back up the stairs. Cat was still on the couch, watching the returns.

“Did he win?” I asked.

“He’s about to,” she said.

“Good-night,” I said.

And here we are this morning.

He won.

He actually won.

Which about half us greeted as wonderful news.

Half of us. Or at least the half of us who voted. Which probably wasn’t even half of us.

Yesterday I asked a few young men at my job if they were planning on voting. Each one said they weren’t—and each gave the same reason why.

As one of them put it to me, “I probably won’t vote because it doesn’t matter who wins. Both parties are basically the same.”

“Are they?” I said.

“Yes. The whole system is run by billionaires who are always going to get what they want, because whoever is president is always going to make sure they do. Voting won’t change that.”

I mean, it wasn’t like he had no point. Especially given that we just elected Elon Musk’s puppet to run our country.

Well, run is probably the wrong word. But whatever it is he’s going to do to it. To us.

To them.

To women. To brown and black people who were born somewhere else but moved here for the chance at a better life. To everyone who won’t be able afford how much more expensive everything is about to become.

To the planet.

Man. It’s about to become a bad time—well, an even worse time—to be Mother Earth.

And God help her if she becomes pregnant.

Speaking as a citizen of Asheville, NC: Bummer that we just elected a guy who can’t pander enough to industries who need climate change to be perceived as a hoax.

So many homes and lives washed away because of that hoax.

I was so wrong about this election. It seemed—it will always seem—inconceivable to me that anyone could vote for Trump, let alone the numbers who did.

“It’s because the alternative was to vote for a woman,” Cat said this morning. “If the Democrats had run a white man, he’d have won. Americans aren’t ready to elect a woman—let alone a brown woman.”

It’s the same point she’s been making since the day Biden pointed his old finger at Harris.

“I really think you’re wrong about that,” I said to Cat not one week ago. “Hillary won the popular vote. And we’ve already elected a black guy—twice. Being a brown woman isn’t going to be enough to keep Harris out of the White House.”

“Okay, it’s called the White House,” she said. “Bit of a clue there as to the problem, don’t you think?”

“Do you know,” I said, “Muhammed Ali once made that exact same point, when—”

“And, to be real clear,” Cat continued, “being brown isn’t Kamala’s primary problem. It’s that she’s a woman. It’s that simple. We can’t have a woman president.”

“Not yet,” I said.

On her way to the kitchen to refill her coffee cup, Cat stopped at my chair to give me a little kiss.

“That’s right,” she said, her hand drifting off my shoulder. “Not yet.”