Obama bobble head anyone?
Many years ago, my mom and dad took us to see the circus at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, and much to their disappointment all my two sisters and I did was beg for souvenirs. It drove my father Yani crazy.
He'd yell at us in a Turkish accent: "I brought you to da cirkis and all you want is dis junk?"
Yesterday, I realized why he was so mad. As my husband and I dragged our six- and nine-year-old kids to the nation's Capitol to watch history unfold, all they wanted was an Obama bobble head.
I was frustrated that my kids didn't quite grasp the importance of the day, and I was pretty upset -- until I met Roderik Williams from Gary, Ind.
He was selling Obama buttons (two for $5) and Obama fans for $8 on the street near the Washington Monument. I asked him what his day job was and he said "entrepreneur."
Roderik made the 14 hour drive from Gary to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th president because he figured he'd make a killing on his Obama merchandise, and by Monday he was feeling pretty good about his decision.
There was a long line waiting to buy his whole Obama inventory, and he was well on his way to making up the $740 he says he paid for a permit to sell his merchandise during the inauguration.
"I got my gas money," he joked.
This was his life, driving from town to town selling political and sports merchandise to hungry consumers.
While he expected to make a windfall from Obamamania, nothing would top the profit he made during the back to back Bulls' championships, when he unloaded a bunch of fan merchandise to sports-a-holics.
There's something about wanting to be part of history, I suppose; wanting a piece of something that made you feel happy.
This week, entrepreneurs like Williams were cashing in on that sentiment all over Washington, D.C., as history-hungry Americans (and a boat load of foreigners) scrambled to take a piece of history home with them.
I guess it didn't matter that much that the bobble head Obama was made in China. Come to think of it, most of the junk we ended up schlepping home was from China.
But hey, it's still about the moment. It's about hope, right?
As my kids played with their Obama "junk" (as my dad would have called it), I kept thinking that the bobble head, the Obama playing cards, the Obama mints, etc., were indeed a great memory of an significant event, but would there really be something significant to this day?
Williams seemed to think so.
"Was it worth it?" I asked him. "I met you didn't I?" he retorted.
Indeed, we met an endless array of people from all different walks of life on the Mall in Washington, D.C., this week. There was a strange feeling in the air, a feeling that we are all pretty much the same -- trying to live our lives, make a living, and accumulate memories we could talk about when we grow old. And take out the junk we've collected and share them with each other.
Someone will be laughing at that bobble head twenty years from now.
