BRING TOILET PAPER AND HAND WARMERS. It is not often that you see a headline like this. In 2009 we had a group of students attending the Presidential Inauguration in Washington DC. The trip had been planned for many months without regard to who the winner would be. History was made for that election and the US elected an African-American to be President. Many of the students were happy to see history in the making and be there to witness in person. There will be a few stories but the first one is about preparation. Several days ago I mentioned the story of a student that had struggled to understand the rules for air travel in the post-9/11 era. There are few stories as important as preparation. We knew that we would have to go through checkpoints on the day of the inauguration and we planned the things we brought accordingly. Because the US Park Service was worried that the Porta-Potties could not accommodate the expected 2 million people. The problem was that they couldn’t guarantee that there would be enough toilet paper. We were warned to bring our own. We loaded up Alex’s backpack with toilet paper and we all had dozens of instant hand warmers. That is funny enough but we didn’t use them all so we actually put them in our luggage to take them and we put them in our luggage to return home to Aurora. I had a constant reminder of the trip until a couple of years ago. In my Trailblazer, I had some compartments in the back and until I sold it a couple of years ago I had one of those rolls of toilet paper in a compartment. When we got to the dealership and I was cleaning the car out, the salesman happened to help and open that compartment. He politely asked if I wanted the roll of toilet paper. I told him that this roll was historic and couldn’t just be discarded. I built up my courage and discarded my sentimentality and told him he could keep it for their bathroom.
