Where were you?

I was at Arctic Thai Restaurant.

Its neon blinking ‘Open’ sign led the way into an empty restaurant; empty except for the one crucial element – a TV. I sat at the plastic table closest to the TV, ordered some food, and asked for the remote – after all, I was the only one there – and I flipped between the station it was already on, CNN, and NBC for what was to be two hours of being glued to my seat.

It didn’t matter that I sat alone in a Thai restaurant in Barrow, Alaska, for two hours. It didn’t matter that that was the level I had to sink to in order to watch TV (there are no bars in Barrow, hence no bars with TVs) on Election Night.

Barack Obama is President.

And as I walked home in the freezing cold, I felt like being patriotic was, for the first time since I was eleven, possible.