getting the hookup

I can’t think of a time in my life when knowing the right people helped me get my hands on something coveted. Usually, if I manage to end up with something rare and popular, such as a spot on the front row at a Coldplay concert, it happens through sheer dumb luck and nothing else – not inside knowledge, not sound strategy, and certainly not political savvy.

And yet, today I’m sitting with two tickets to Obama’s visit to Lynchburg in my purse, precisely because this one time, when it really counted, I happened to know the right person.

A close friend’s mother is very well-connected in Virginia’s Democratic circles, and she put the word out yesterday that Obama was rumored to be adding a Lynchburg stop to his travels on Wednesday. We all waited around anxiously all day until we got the call shortly after 5. Go downtown, she said. Go now. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. So I called Sammi and literally grabbed my stuff and bolted out the door. We got in a short line and had tickets by 6pm. The email from Obama for America went out at 6:18, and by 7 they were long gone.

It’s no secret that my summer has been pretty much thoroughly horrible and sucky. I still have to tell you about my brand-new Dell computer that has been sitting with a dead motherboard for two weeks, and about how I almost got into a head-on collision in downtown Atlanta this weekend, and blah dee blah blah. But hey, on Wednesday afternoon I’ll be with 999 of my closest friends hearing our future president speak. So there’s that.