I knew I’d lost my chance. It was 7:44 am and I knew that the venue where Bernie Sanders was holding a town hall event today in my city had opened at seven to allow people to enter. I had meant to get up at 5:00 am, but I’d had a rough night. Pain in my shoulder, pain in my left hip, pain in my neck. The kind of pain that keeps you awake, that doesn’t give you a moment’s peace. Pain that was worse than usual for me, and a sure sign that my autoimmune symptoms had flared up. I eased myself out of bed, and saw that my abdomen was distended, and I felt chills. More signs that my illness had taken a wrong turn overnight. So, what did I do?
I went downstairs, took 50 mg of Prednisone (corticosteroid) to alleviate the onset of my illness, got in my car and started of to make the twelve mile drive to the place where Bernie Sanders was going to speak in my city this morning. I know, a pretty a quixotic stunt on my part (or a stupid one, to be perfectly blunt). Though the day was cold and raw, I brought with me no hat, no gloves, no windbreaker – real smart there, Steven. The local NPR radio station reported traffic was backed up all along the roads that led to Sanders’ venue. Thousands of people were already there, the news reader said. I turned the radio off and kept driving anyway. It was a fool’s errand, a fool’s hope, but I went anyway.
Just off the highway, at the exit that led to the campus of the local community college, I could see crowds of people lined up to get into the building where, even as I type this now, Bernie’s town hall event has started. I should have turned around and driven back home right then and there. I reminded myself that the doors had opened at 7:00 am, and those people in line probably weren’t going to get in either. But, I thought to myself, maybe Bernie would speak to the people outside on this raw, April morning, before the main event. Maybe I still had a chance to see him.
So, I didn’t turn around. I got in the line of cars that, moving at a snail’s pace, led to the the entrance to the campus, and then to campus parking lots made available for everyone who was coming to see Bernie. After another twenty minutes, I finally got in and found a place to park, though it was at least a half mile away from where I need to be, if not more. More fool I, I got out of my car and took off toward where I still hoped to see Bernie. I walked as fast as my 59 year old legs allowed. With every step I took on the wet, muddy lawn that lay between me and my goal, a sharp pain shot through my hip. Yeah, I’m an idiot, remember?
All around me were groups of strangers, people like me, and not so much like me, all of us hoping against hope for a miracle. Hoping that we weren’t too late, but knowing we probably were. A father with two young daughters, ages nine and ten. A group of young men and women, talking and laughing together, perhaps students. Old people (older than me, in any case). Couples, and single individuals alone by themselves, all marching into a bright morning sun, the glare of which burst straight into my retinas, half-blinding me. People in front of me and people behind me. I wasn’t the only idiot, fool, dreamer, what have you.
My face became numb from the cold breeze in my face. I pulled my hands inside the sleeves of my fleece to warm them up. But I didn’t stop. Not until I reached the entrance to the parking lot of the venue, a “2,500-seat, 170,000-square-foot non-profit indoor athletics facility” located in the far southeast corner of the Monroe Community College campus. And there she was, a young female police officer. I could tell by the look on her face she had bad news to tell us.
“They’re not letting anyone else in,” she said. “See that line?” She pointed at the hundreds, maybe a thousand or more, people standing in the parking lot of the complex. “It’s been like that since 7:30 this morning.”
I asked her if we couldn’t go in anyway, and she pointed down the road to where some bleachers stood along the west side of the building. A group of Bernie supporters were mingling around there, also stopped in front of another police officer. No one was sitting in the bleachers.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “No one else is getting in.”And then she smiled at me, a sweet, wistful smile that you rarely see on a police officer, but one I see all the time on my own twenty year old daughter and her twenty-something friends. A very human gesture.
“I wish I could go in,” she said.
I smiled at her when she said that, and thanked her. And then I began the long trudge back to my car. Funny thing is, I didn’t feel the least bit sad that I missed my chance to see Bernie Sanders in the flesh, even as I climbed back into my car, pulled out of the parking lot, and drove home. And even though I didn’t get what came for, what I’d hoped to receive, the sight of Bernie speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of thousands of like-minded people, many of whom believe in the movement he helped ignite, and to which he has given a voice. I realized I had no regrets.
I still don’t.