It was nice to almost meet you Mr. President

For the majority of my life, I kept a secret from the people around me. I was obsessed with presidents. I had the pencils, placemats, rulers, bookmarks, books and all sorts of things. As a child I loved to learn about the White House and I especially loved the "dishes." For the majority of my life, I thought this wasn't cool so I pretty much kept it to my family and myself.

The thing I've learned is that when you grow up, you quit caring so much. So here is what I have to say: I AM AN OBSESSIVE FAN ABOUT PRESIDENTS. In our apartment there are 5 different pictures of framed presidents (Jackson, Truman, Bush-41). On a side note there is only one of NSYNC (Rolling Stone 2000).

My favorite president is Truman and my favorite first lady is Bush (Barbara, of course, though I have nothing against Laura). I have a goal to make it to all presidential libraries and graves. I'm fascinated by this group of forty three men who have shaped our country.

So all this to say, it's a dream to meet or even see a president in real life. I saw a senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison in passing at the State Fair and Rick Perry at a State Fair ceremony. It's time to meet a president. And today was almost the day.

Yesterday I got an email that said President Bush (W-43) was signing his new book this morning in Dallas. It was tricky because I was working 10-4 and the signing was at 9. I thought if I could time it right, I could make it all flow. The next rough part is that I've been fighting a cold for over a week and am requiring more sleep than usual to function. (Thank goodness for the time change!) So I decided that I could be at the store by 7. It was the best I could do.

This is when things start going bad. I didn't have time to wash my hair and couldn't figure out a subtly patriotic outfit to wear. But I head out anyway and when I got to the Borders, it was out of control. There were tons of people, no parking, and people dangerously crossing the busy streets. My coworker's friend was 50th in line and she got in line at 7:30 yesterday evening, just to show how crazy the people were.

I assessed the situation from my car and realized a couple of things. All the people in line were not going to meet the president. His schedule would not allow it and I was so tired that it wasn't worth the chance today. So I turned around and  laughed about the situation. It just wasn't my day to meet a president. I made the right choice, 2500 people were there and 1300 got to have their book signed, and that was 500 more than he was contractually obligated to sign.

And tonight I admitted that of the four Bushes (George, Barbara, G.W. and Laura), that GW is definitely ranked fourth although who was one was never picked. And I decided that when I did meet a president, I would have clean hair and be subtly patriotic.