Birthday plan: Hiding if Biden doesn’t win
Birthday plan: Hiding if Biden doesn’t win
No gifts needed, just don’t want my 39th birthday to be like 2016 Election Day
Writer’s note: This post was originally published on Medium’s “We Need to Talk” on November 1, 2020.
When you’re under the age of 18, having a birthday after Election Day means absolutely nothing. I’m a holiday baby, too, so when I wasn’t thanking a few veterans in my family, I was loudly bragging about how banks and post offices closed to celebrate my Veteran’s Day birthday. I didn’t realize the weight of a November birthday until it hit me (an out-of-state college student) that I had no idea how to get an absentee ballot to vote for Al Gore — before seeing the horror show that was Sept. 11. I’ve voted in every midterm and presidential election since.
Fast forward to 11/11/11 when I turned 30. I decided I was going to a different Hawaiian island every five years until I visited them all. After Maui, I was pretty set on visiting Honolulu for my 35th birthday. However, I was still working in traditional newsrooms at the time and noticed that the 17 Republican candidates had dwindled down to one — someone I could not wrap my mind around. I had a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right and was getting fed up with being assigned to edit news reports on former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails. I canceled my Honolulu trip, gritting my teeth and hoping the Senior Editor would stop assigning these conspiracy theory reports to beginner news writers. For whatever reason, she found the election to be funny and even took bets on who would win. I was not amused.
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Although I knew I wouldn’t make it to Honolulu, I still took my birthday week off, starting from Thursday (Nov. 3) until Nov. 11. Something told me I did not want to be in this newsroom when I got the results. I would not be able to behave in the kind of unbiased manner that journalists have been told to do.
In 2008, I worked in a predominantly black newsroom. Damn near everyone either ran across the street to Grant Park to stare in awe at former President Barack H. Obama or were typing like Kermit to get the news reports out by midnight. In 2012, I was in another newsroom with far less black people — with a signed contract that we would neither cheer nor loudly complain after hearing the results of Obama vs. Mitt Romney.
By 2016, I’d moved on to a new company, and I was the only black employee in a room full of early-to-mid, 20-something, white men. With only a handful of women, the only other person of color was the Guatemalan boss who was betting on election results. Former presidential election candidate Hillary Clinton losing just was not going to hit them the way it would me.
I’d made up my mind that I was not going to be this sad on my birthday. I started making plans — ridiculous things that would take my mind off of the 2016 presidential election.
When I got the news on Nov. 3, I looked at all that red, leaned back on the couch and said, “Well, I was right.” I shook my head, knowing I was part of the 94% of black women who voted for Clinton. The next day, I woke up and watched a news report to see who the winner (by electoral vote, not popular vote) was and tears came rushing down my face. I did not expect to cry at all — and definitely not shoulder-shaking crying. By the time I finished, I’d made up my mind that I was not going to be this sad on my birthday. I started making plans — ridiculous things that would take my mind off of the 2016 presidential election.