The reason I am glad Obama won!!

This may seem shallow to some of you, but please, for a minute, try and invision where I live and what MY kids have gone thru and you will see why Obama winning was EVER so important in MY world. This may be a bit lenghty, be patient, it's worth it.

We were trying to buy a house, as some of you will know, a few years ago and I lost it. The idiot selling it to me started working me over, but it turned out to NOT be such a bad thing.....

I was sitting at my computer one day and my son, now 15 but was only 7 at the time, came in from school and walked straight up to me just as serious as the day is long and asked me, "Mom, why are we supposed to hate brown people?"

Shocked out of my mind, I stopped what I was doing, took him downstairs and asked him what on earth he was talking about and WHO told him about this. He said his teacher at school had told him and this teacher's son, who was his friend, told him this. Appauled, as I have always taught my kids to NEVER ever judge by the color of one's skin, but by the individual, and here it was testing me, and my family. I had to move carefully and think quickly because I didn't want my son being mistreated in school when he went and defended this, but at the same time, I WANTED Him to defend it in a small way. I knew this county I lived in was insanely racial, but it hadn't hit MY family to this date so I thought it wasn't so bad as rumors I had heard.

Anyway, I talked to him and reiterated what I had always taught them and explained that anyone that thought differently was shallow and didn't know any better. That little boy, who was his friend, had only been taught to hate and it was up to us SMART people to teach them otherwise and correct them in a nice way so as not to make the little boy feel bad, and that's JUST what he did....... THAT little boy got it and all was well, but my son came home with a black eye because another little boy overheard it and him and my son got in a huge fight about it. He broke the other little boy's nose and was quite proud of himself for standing up for his "brown" friend.

We moved away from that county within a month and he soon made a friend I think he'll have for life, he is biracial and Rally asks me often if he will always have a tough time of things because of it, he loves this friend and these two are thick as thieves.... they are insanely close and I think they'd die for each other, I honestly think this. BOTH are very good boys with huge hearts.

Cut to tonight.... my son stayed up with me and he listened and took in EVERY single word of this election coverage.. and he looked at me and said "Mom", as he hugged me like he hasn't in 5 years... "You were right, brown people are JUST as good as we are and now the rest of the world sees it too, just like we do" and I don't think I have ever been so proud of my son in his whole little young life.

It proved to MY son that it doesn't matter what color your skin is, if you want something and you want it badly enough, people will see it and respond to it, and they did....... by a landslide, they did.

I didn't cast MY vote for Obama because of his color, but because of what he stands for, what he makes US WANT to stand for and what it means to MY children to know that you can come from NOTHING, regardless of what color you are, what status you started out with, or anything else, you CAN be and DO anyting you set your sites on IF you want it bad enough..... and the world WILL respond to you!!

I told you it would be long and I hope you get what I am trying to say...... and WHY this election meant so much to me and why it totally engulfed me in the manner in which it did.

YES WE CAN!!