I'm trying to remember if I gave a s**t who was President when I was seven. Probably not, I was to busy running around with my Red Ryder BB gun.
Seven years old for me was the heart of the Carter error. I cared that Carter was President solely because my father would come home from the office pretty much furious every night because the interest rates were absolutely murdering his business (commercial lending). We would all be inside and ready for dinner by the time Dad got home (usually just before 6:00), so the only thing on TV was the network news, replete with all of the misery that was befalling the country while Carter buttoned his cardigan.
But I undoubtedly remember my father coming home, stomping through the living room muttering obscenities about Carter on the TV as he went to his bedroom to change for supper.
I have only a very faint memory of watching Nixon leave the White House on B&W television while I sat on the floor in diapers, and a similar recollection years later looking at the footage of the last helicopter taking off from the Saigon embassy (not in diapers, but I didn't really have a genuine grasp of what was going on, other than that it was obviously important). And I have
VIVID memories of going with my mother to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Back then, voting booths were actually booths, so you went in, pulled the curtain, and flipped little levers to cast your vote in each particular race. Then you pulled a big lever on the right that simultaneously cast your vote (via punchcard) and opened the curtain. At least at the time, they had little stools in the voting booths, and people would have their kids in the voting booths with them. So I was placed up on the stool and I "cast my vote" for Reagan, technically the very first vote I cast, even if it wasn't really my own. I was barely nine years old (my birthday was about eight days earlier), but the excitement for Reagan was absolutely electric around here at that time.
