Mr. Obama

I was lost in my own little world of embarrassing forgetfulness. The gentleman behind the plastic fold-out table gave me an impatient look and then glanced back at the line I was holding up. It wrapped all the way through the atrium, which was bustling with other fellow caucuser's. This was the biggest caucus he had ever seen, and there was some dumb-ass in the front gumming up the works.

I was starting to slightly panic now. I quickly glanced around, looking at people's pins and t-shirts. No help. I had no idea how to spell Obama's first name.

See, they give you a little blank slip of paper and tell you to write your candidates name on it. I now know that if I wrote 'Obama', it probably would have been sufficient, but for some reason I was haunted by the idea that Obama himself might actually read this ballot and be mortally insulted. After I finally snapped out of my twilight-zone funk and realized that 'the only black candidate' would probably work, I scribbled out Barack Obama.
Whew. Lucky guess.

What this caucus has taught me, besides spelling, is the love of the word 'caucus' in verb form. It's fine when used as a noun (e.g the DFL party caucus will be held in the auditorium of the middle school). But as a verb, it's incredibly fun to use. It's like that little dog Sam who is so disfigured that he's, in effect, spellbinding. It's hard to look away... (http://samugliestdog.com/). Caucus is the bastard child of the words 'mucus' and 'cock', which for me, adds a little flavor to it's sentences (e.g. People all over the state were caucusing all at once, and in record numbers tonight).

So I hope that everyone caucused last night (unless you voted in a primary...boooooring), and also that this word becomes a regular in the American vernacular, like 'sweet', or 'dude'. That's just one man's dream though. Caucus.