Ah, President's Day!
There is no school, so I do not have to go in to work. Just think of all the possibilities open to me today! What should I do?
The real question, though, is what am I doing? What I am doing is sitting in a coffee shop waiting for the place across the street put new tires on my car. Yeah, this is turning out to be a bang-up President's Day already. Of all the things I could be doing this is about 1,679th on my list.
Now that I think about it, this might just be what President's Day is all about. Today we commemorate two of our great Presidents-- Washington and Lincoln. More widely, we celebrate all the Presidents of our great country and the great office that they held. I know it is a stretch, but stick with me. If all of those Presidents had not done what they did in upholding their office and protecting the Constitution of our United States, then I may not have the freedom to sit here in a coffee shop right now and randomly pound out my uninteresting thoughts. In fact, I might not even have the option of picking which tire place to get ripped off by this morning.
The freedoms we continue to enjoy as American citizens are, in part, due to the determination and choices made by our Presidents. Yes, there have been bad decisions made along the way. And, there have been many policies that, after history has judged, were probably a setback rather than a help. All-in-all though, our country has upheld personal freedom and great opportunity for its citizens. For that I am thankful.
I will not devolve here into a prophetical warning about what the new administration will do to undermine all of that. While I definitely have my reservations (as do many others), I find it hard to believe that a 4- or 8-year span of time will undo over 200 years of this nation's history.
No, today I will enjoy the small, everyday freedoms that are mine. Freedom to spend my hard-earned money on car maintenance. Freedom to splurge for a large latte. Freedom to sully the already-full internet with my ramblings. Freedom to, in about an hour, go home and surprise my wife and kids who assumed I left early this morning to go to work. (Yeah, I forgot to mention last night that I don't have to work today.) That is how I will spend this President's Day, and, hopefully, that will honor the memory of those great men in some small way.
