Much earlier today, like in the post-asscrack of dawn hours, read on NYT iPhone app that thee Teddy Kennedy departed for the big cocktail-laced politico event in the hereafter.

Yours Truly mused or de-mused with a twinge of regret that I never photographed him but there is a lovely memory attached to him.

Perhaps inspired by a few political rallies that YT attended with her parents in the 70s, and the occasional hanging with the last wave of hippies at an impressionable age (a practice that continued until about the age of nineteen), decided that, upon hearing that Teddy was coming to Buffalo's god-awful Convention Center as a stop on his campaign trail, skipped school to see him.
Went with one of my best schoolpals, MarjorieX, and bussed it downtown, in our political tweed blazers that we reserved for our political activities.

Downtown we went, amid a crush of people to see not only the Democratic challenger to Jimmy Carter, but to see a real-live Kennedy. I think we were firmly set in both camps.

Being young, and cute in our tweed blazers, we were spotted and singled out by some members of Kennedy's campaign and were not only given oversized Kennedy in 80 placards, but Kennedy in 80 t-shirts, if we agreed to wear them immediately. So we stretched them over the blazers, proudly and suddenly thrust into an important background sea of Kennedy supporters.
And YT, they perhaps did not know, or did not care, was too young to vote.
But if I had had the op, and once I did, voted straight-ahead Dem.

So there MarjorieX and I were, subsumed in political fervor, merrily skipping school and truly doing something otherworldly and important. Screaming and clapping as we were so moved.

After the rally, we queued up on the street along the motorcade route and held up our placards.

The limousine carrying Teddy came to a stop directly in front of me and MarjorieX, and YT had a second-long and shared glance – between me and a member of the Kennedy Clan.

Through the tinted limo glass, across a span of thirty feet, between haggard street fighting and campaigning rockstar politician and idealistic/pome-writing teenager there passed that human energy of watching/watcher, and a shared belief in the possibility of a democratic world, a happier life and a world beyond the confines of a limited high school in the suburbs of the Middling City: a world where experience and talent outreaches privilege.

And this was before YT owned a decent SLR. These were the days of borrowed cameras, the salad days when the passion had not yet taken complete control.

Privileged Love.