I debated whether or not to admit that I missed the historic moment yesterday.  I'm an administrator at a trade school in the South End whose student body is largely black and Latino, and we had no less than four big screen TVs in various lobbies and auditoriums so that no one would miss it.  It was set to be a very memorable "where were you?" moment.

The problem was I didn't work in the morning, and while I had the vague sense for some reason that the ceremony would commence at noon, I wasn't due in until half-past, and when you don't have to be at work until a certain time, your whole being rebels at showing up half an hour early.  Even to see that "historic moment" we've all be waiting for.

I was actually in Back Bay shopping when someone in the check out at Filene's Basement, I think it was, wondered aloud why it was so quiet today. 

"Must be the inauguration," the clerk answered. 

It seemed a little unlikely at first, but as I walked from Boylston to Berkeley right around noon on my way to the South End, the streets and sidewalks were undeniably unusually quiet.  I dropped into the Perk, my little coffee shop, to get a cup of coffee just as Obama was starting his speech, which the girls behind the counter were listening to on the radio.  There were only two customers in the place — unheard of for a weekday lunch hour.

The girls there are nineteen and twenty, I think, and I had been carrying on a political play-by-play all campaign season with one of them, whose seriousness about the process was impressive.  I greeted her yesterday with my usual conspiratorial smile, but she only glared back.  I realized immediately that I should say nothing, since they were listening intently to Obama's inaugural address.

When I got to the counter she looked at me with something close to contempt, and greeted me with: "We're listening to history being made here, what are you doing?" 

Ouch.

I stammered that I must have lost track of the time, but she was clearly disappointed to see me of all people, who had commiserated with her all through the endless campaign when the Democrats looked down and celebrated with her when they were up, who had discussed articles in the papers with her, and had seemed so keenly interested in the outcome of the race myself. 

And now the truth comes out.  This was one of those moments you don't miss, you can't be casual about.  This was History.  You can't be there if you weren't there.  I might as well have been born a hundred years from now.  I will only ever witness this moment secondhand. 

I slinked out with my small coffee, without another word, feeling chastened, and managed to catch most of the speech on the big screen in the main lobby of the school, while some students, keenly engaged, stoood in a tight semicircle around it, hanging on every word, and others milled around, chatting amongst themselves, nothing much having changed for them, it seemed — still greeting each other affectionately with "yo, nigga!" — their customary honorific.

I found the speech moving in the end but agree with William Safire that it "fell short of the anticipated immortality."  Obama has always maintained he is a symbol, and in some ways the moment was bound to be greater than the man.  Now begins the hard part, where we'll see the real measure of the man in how he plays his historic moment.

As for the moment I missed, I guess I have mixed emotions. I knew I would be able to see the swearing-in online, and probably will see it played and replayed countless times in the coming years.  I knew I would want to read the speech later, too.  But there was something about standing in that little knot of students in whom something new and wonderful — right then, at that very moment — had burst to life.  That's what now is for.   

I've always been a little slow on the draw, but I'm glad I got there in the nick of time to catch the tail-end of now, at least.