It's A New Day. At least on my calendar...

November 4th. The day the world got some. Where were you when the Man got an open invitation to pick its cracked face up off the ground? Race relations not healed but definitely took a huge step in a positive direction (not forgetting the setback civil rights received with the passing of Proposition 8.). I was seated in Slice, a lounge slash bar slash hella good pizza joint in the downtown area of Atlanta. As the breaking news alerts continued to push me and my good friends to the edge of our seats, we waited patiently on Hope. We knew in our hearts that America would not leave possibility on the corner, waiting for yet another Freedom bus. Me, Reese and Liz left the house that day knowing anything could happen. If Obama didn't win, we might be compelled to violence, tears and or madness. Seriously, we knew that each of us had invested so much of our emotion into November 4th being the day we lived to see a black president that there was no consolation awaiting us in explanations of the electoral college or the Republican voter populous. Bottom line, we weren't trying to hear anything other than President-elect Obama.

Our day went like this: woke up that morning, had some Cap'n Crunch, watched the news, suited and booted up, rolled up, rolled out. Brunch, jammin and finally landing at the King Memorial that evening. After getting glimpses of Al Sharpton marching over to the new Ebenezer Baptist Church from the tomb of MLK, Jr. we headed back to the car and ended up at Slice after stopping by the Verve lounge. As we the music tuned in and out for commercials and Wolf Blitzer's announcement of poll results, it seemed as if the announcement was planned as a surprise. Seriously, one minute the ticker said Obama was in the lead by over 100 points and then all of a sudden "CNN predicts Obama elected president"! There was about 2 seconds of silence as every one in Slice processed what was happening in that moment and then from then on until I left, an eruption of cheers, Young Jeezy and hell yeahs. Bananas doesn't even describe the energy in the room. Maybe electric bananas. Perhaps acid bananas on jazz emotion captures somewhat the mood. White people happy. Black people happy. Even the po-leese was dapping up. Hell to the yeah. I was proud to be an American for the first time in my life. I felt like my father, brother, cousin and best friend was just elected president. In that moment, Obama was definitely proud relative of mine and when he and his family walked out onto the stage, I was there with them. Standing right there on that stage saying "we did it!".

Since then, I'm on cloud Obama. This joy is something can't nobody take away. Fa real, I'm good. Sinceriously.