It’s funny how things happen, Burton used to tell me. The very moment you’re engaged in some task of mind-numbing insignificance–cutting your toenails, maybe, or fishing in the sofa for the remote–the world is being refashioned around you. You stand before a mirror to brush your teeth, and halfway around the planet flood waters are on the rise. Every minute of every day, the world transforms itself in ways you can hardly imagine, and there you are, sitting in traffic or wondering what’s for lunch or just staring blithely out a window. History happens while you’re making other plans, Burton always says.
I guess I know that now. I guess we all know that.
Me, I was in a sixth-floor Chicago office suite working on my résumé when it started. The usual chaos swirled around me–phones braying, people scurrying about, the televisions singing exit poll data over the din–but it all had a forced artificial quality. The campaign was over. Our numbers people had told us everything we needed to know: when the polls opened that morning, Stoddard was up seventeen points. So there I sat, dejected and soon to be unemployed, with my feet on a rented desk and my lap-top propped against my knees, mulling over synonyms for directed. As in directed a staff of fifteen. As in directed public relations for the Democratic National Committee. As in directed a national political campaign straight into the toilet.
Then CNN started emitting the little overture that means somewhere in the world history is happening, just like Burton always says.
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