This past Wednesday our school had the opportunity of hosting a town hall meeting for our county, due to our auditorium being big enough to accommodate all of the community visitors that showed up. The reason for this meeting was the visitation of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden. Ever since he has been elected to office, he has held a yearly public meeting in each county.
A couple of students got to go to the meeting including me. My interest in going was to see a real live US senator, along with trying to learn more about what the political debate topics are right now. I didn’t really care what was going to be said or if anything got done, just as long as I learned something.
The discussion wasn’t too hard to follow, until people started asking questions about healthcare, insurance, and anything else that is medical.
When the meeting was over, people who didn’t get a chance to ask the senator questions crowded him for one last say. A fellow student and I decided to try to get a quick handshake from him, which turned out to be a whole lot harder than it looked. Even though the meeting had been fairly calm, a small crowd around Wyden started getting riled up and the assistants started escorting the senator out of the building. We tried to cut him off at the entrance doors but there were still people around him and his advisors were trying to speed up his journey to his car. Finally in the parking lot before he loaded into his car I was able to shake his hand.
Some people that must have felt they still hadn’t given him an earful were still muttering to themselves after Wyden had left. I even had one guy stop me as I was reentering the high school and telling me he wanted to apologize for politicians robbing today’s generation of something or the other. I said I was fine with whatever he was talking about and he said I shouldn’t be about whatever situation he was referring to. I then decided to head to lunch before he could complain more about whatever was keeping him irritated at politicians. I saw him standing in the hallway when I turned my back a few seconds later looking like he want to share his life’s burdens with another student or community member. What an experience. I don’t know if I could be patient enough to be a politician if I had to constantly meet people like him.
Due to community members coming to visit, the front row of our high school was roped off for visitors during that day. As an incentive to make sure students didn’t park in this zone, our principal left his personal parking space up for grabs. I didn’t expect to get it as I am usually not the first car or even the second to arrive at the high school. Imagine my surprise when after getting out of Seminary I pulled up to the high school with the principal’s space still open. I took full advantage of the situation and enjoyed being parked in a coveted spot for a day.
