I picked up a few more snippets, some ramblings about habius corpus. Then something about Euclid? He was holding court, a peripatetic professor at rush hour, on a Brooklyn bound D. And I, slouched about 20 seats away, intermittently gazed down the crowded corridor of the subway car, attempting what we all do: to put a face to the mysterious straphanger’s voice.

He continued in this vain until at least Fort Hamilton Parkway, where I exited at the above ground station. He traversed Greek philosophy, French royalty and American political theory. His measured cadence was hypnotic, his subject matter iffy: “The Ancient Greeks were best known for their dry cleaning. The Rutgers campus is home to the world’s most fantastic ancient statutes, visited by millions each year.”

Then came my favorite: “I’ve never met a woman who wasn’t a double agent.”

Through the sea of backpacks and coats, I discovered that the mystifying voice had a body: instead of donning a tweed blazer and khakis, the professor was in threadbare attire, a gray patina covering his skin and clothes. He was wild, mad and shoeless; had any of it been accurate, his lecture would have been on YouTube. But it was his gumption, not his accuracy, that rapt me.

Looking back, I realize that what captivated me most was not what he didn’t know but what he did: the beauty of this town is that everybody has a story. As a writer and teacher, there’s nothing I cherish more than that. So here I am, the double agent, telling his story to the world.

1. contributing already to the Obama campaign
2. schlepping a very cumbersome grocery bag while six months pregnant
3. fantasizing about the dill pickles I just bought

I still contemplated stopping and seeing what they wanted. Money, I assumed. And why not throw another 10 bucks his way? And this is what makes his campaign so brilliant. I am no economist, as I have said before. But I know a good sales pitch when I see one. The Obama campaign knows that people care more now than they probably ever have. Besides my parents’ generation, who still glance up dreamily when asked about the days of JFK and RFK, most voters today are energized by what enervates them. Myself included.And while some may slow at the finish line, Obama pulls a Michael Johnson. Or a Michael Phelps as it were these days. As a teacher, there are few greater life lessons one can bestow upon her students: tenacity has its reward. It may sound cliché, but let’s be frank here: he’s young, he’s agile, he’s believable and he’s inspiring. Like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, he makes us want to be better men…and women.

It doesn’t hurt that his campaign is run like the Google Board of Directors were in charge of the German train system. From educators to engineers, he has ingratiated himself with people who run one hell of a campaign. I’m not sure who wants it more these days: him or us.

Which is why a sometimes slightly disenchanted, disheartened, pregnant school teacher who’s lost 1/3 of her scant retirement fund and plans to raise a baby in a one room apartment, indeed has a minute for Obama.

By Thanksgiving eve of 1980, I was off to my second annual viewing of Macy’s finest helium heroines as they rose to their glory over the course of the evening. Somewhat accidentally, my dad says, is how we ended up watching the floats inflate along the sidelines of the Museum of Natural History. Although seeing the infamous whale inside maintained a certain cache, nothing, including Chinese New Year or Annie (the first time around), could compare to our annual Thanksgiving eve trek to the Upper West Side.

My mother basted her turkey while friends and family helped prepare for the following day’s feast; but my daddy and I were off to watch those grand, looming and colorful characters puff and inflate. I remember those first years quite well. The parade itself was an afterthought; I would wake up to the television, seeking out all the floats I could remember from the night before.

We were two characters ourselves, a Jewish Frick and Frack, Kavalier and Clay, Ross and daughter, shouting for Kermit like the Yanks were barely down in the 9^th. The roads weren’t cordoned off then; a few police lingered. We ate pretzels. And meat on a stick. We were travelers who encountered all eventualities: some years hail, others blustering winds. We bought glow in the dark bracelets and I sat on my dad’s shoulders. Kermit’s limbs would sag and then extend, helium, and the small chanting crowd, encouraging him to eek out one more year. Go Kermey. Go Kermey. He was an old float.

Eventually though, Kermit retired. But not us. This past Wednesday, my dad and I celebrated our 27^th visit to the floats, missing only one year to the flu (mine, not Kermit’s). Sure, we’ve changed as well. In college, I would invariably cut my Wednesday classes if they weren’t already cancelled, racing down from New Hampshire, cheering on my aging Volvo as I would Kermit. Come on, one more year. You can make it.

The balance shifted. Fewer floats and pretzels, more fancy dinners. First, Union Square. Then Shun Lee. Since then, Le Bernadin, Gramercy Tavern, Montrachet. Yet the main attraction remained the same. It was our tradition.

In 2002, I moved to New York for graduate school. Now I was the savvy city girl, and my dad came to retrieve me in the West Village for our annual date. And in 2005, perhaps our most special dinner yet, I watched as my dad carefully questioned the waiter regarding how they cooked the Dover Sole. It had been only five weeks since a minor heart attack forced him to make major changes. Sure, the cream sauce was good. But being here is better.

2007. I live in Brooklyn now and am planning a wedding. No matter. Flower arrangements and bridal parties can wait. This is our special night. Oops, it just got sappy. So before this turns into Miracle on 34^th Street meets Father of the Bride, I’ll switch gears. It turns out it’s not actually our night anymore.

It’s the whole town’s night!

Nice Matin must have been the gastronomic segue to watching the floats. The restaurant is jammed with pre-turkey cheer; wine is flowing and reservations are barely honored. We finish dinner and walk west, along with the madding crowd. Despite seeing the streets busier over the years, somehow 2008 feels like the tipping point. Masses of strollers pound across Columbus Avenue, thousands of policeman monitor the docile, if not affected, crowd. Cheer is in the air but, in the spirit of New York, so is the hum of being in the cool place.

Religion isn’t the opiate of the people. Hulking, cartoon gods are. Shrek. Mutant turtles. Sure, I could be called a Thanksgiving Grinch. Certainly every child should be able to look back on urban youth with larger than life memories of their favorite characters blown up in 3-D. But must everything become a circus? I remember when the crowds were simply a sideshow. Crews of workmen and women on the job through the night. The rest of us just had our nose against the fence.

As New York Magazine wrote, “What was once simply a preparatory stage to the big show has evolved into an event itself with the crowds to prove it.”

Don’t get me wrong, I followed the madding crowd this year. And I’m just as competitive as the next girl on the F train. So please note for the record, that I was there first. Not in 1927 when it began, but close enough.  Standing on the shoulders of a giant, when New York wasn’t Disneyland.