I was at Grant Park last Tuesday for Barack Obama’s election night party. It was surreal – the speech, the election, the strangers bunched so tight against me that we may be married. If I had to use a single word, that word would be “historic,” because you can put “historic” before any noun and make it sound more important than it is, such as “historic bird vomit.”

Beginning at the historic hour of 3:30 p.m., 30,000 lucky ticket holders and our plus-ones filed in two-by-two, cameras around their necks and buttons on their lapels. It was a lot like Noah’s ark, if instead of animals God commanded Noah to save political science geeks. Another field at the park held the overflow crowd, tens of thousands more people who couldn’t get tickets but wanted to one day tell their grandchildren they paid $20 for a Barack Obama T-shirt at one of several official merchandise stands.

By 6:10 we had been released from a second waiting area to a third, and beyond that to a bank of metal detectors where our personal belongings were inspected by a staff of highly competent and attentive Secret Service agents. Just kidding, our possessions were actually inspected by TSA agents, meaning an occasional weapon could have made its way through but there would be absolutely no toenail clippers endangering Obama’s life.

From there, I ran as fast as I could across Grant Park, beyond the stands selling historic $5 slices of pizza and $3 20-ounce bottles of Coke and – in a mistake I still regret – a long, historic row of port-a-potties, my last chance at a bathroom for at least five hours. I chased other sprinting young’uns to my final destination, a snaking metal barricade about 125 feet from the long blue stage. I was 90 degrees to the right of where Obama would speak, meaning that – and I do not mean to brag – when he gestured upwards, I would have an unobstructed view of his armpit.

I was about five feet back from the barricade in a crowd as dense as Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Beyond the stage, a historic jumbotron aired CNN. During commercials the speakers blared inspirational-sounding pop music, mostly “Higher and Higher” by Jackie Wilson. “Your love keeps lifting me higher and higher,” Jackie would sing from some CD somewhere, and the crowd, God bless them, did not get sick of this, even as the number of times it was played approached triple digits and I wanted to strangle Jackie with his microphone cord, tighter and tighter.

When Wolf Blitzer announced a state had gone for Obama, the crowd roared. When McCain won one, they booed and hissed. CNN’s “Projection” graphic, with its four bass beats, elicited the Pavlovian response of a hundred thousand turned heads, followed by Wolf’s announcement of the IMPORTANT URGENT ELECTION NEWS that Obama had lost Utah. People reacted to this news as if Dick Cheney had shot them in the face, even though Utah is so conservative it wouldn’t have voted for Obama if McCain had forcibly gay married Donny Osmond and Mitt Romney.

CNN projected Virginia a little after 9:30, and suddenly Obama had enough electoral votes that California would put him over the top. The air thickened, as if the assembled crowd had released a simultaneous and historic fart.

At 10:00 Wolf gave the breaking update we knew was coming: Barack Obama, freshman senator from Illinois, was President-elect of the United States of America. The place erupted. Even the cops started taking photos, and I saw more than a couple Secret Service agents crack smiles. Now all we could do was wait for him to come out and speak, because there was no way to get to the toilets.

Finally, at 10:30, a voice came on over the loudspeaker: “Ladies and gentlemen… please welcome… Reverend Philip Cousin.”

I’d never seen so much animosity at the announcing of a religious figure, but the crowd really, reeeeeaaaallllly wanted him to be Barack Obama. At least it wasn’t Jeremiah Wright.

A few minutes later soul singer Kim Stratton from Atlanta, Ga. took the stage to sing the national anthem. I mention Kim Stratton’s full name and hometown because she butchered the words, horribly embarrassing everyone in attendance. Kim Stratton’s numerous mistakes included mangled lyrics, bent notes and awkward pauses.

The only nice thing I can say about Kim Stratton of Atlanta, Ga., is that she made me feel a lot better about Jackie Wilson.

And then, at long last, it happened: They played “Higher and Higher” for the twelve thousandth time. After that the Obama family came out to raucous applause and tears. The President-elect gave his historic speech, which I heard was very moving, but I didn’t really get to listen because I was so busy taking grainy photos. I snapped 180 shots over the course of the evening, and in maybe three of them you can tell the subject is Barack Obama and not, say, a small, but very historic, tree.

The speech ended, the crowd emptied, and I found myself walking up Michigan Avenue, where cops had blocked off traffic and some revelers sang and danced while others sold historic Obama merchandise, which I did not buy because I have historically been known as a cheapskate. Half an hour later, when the hubbub had died down, a cab stopped for me. I gestured for the driver to instead pick up a family with a young daughter. But the driver pretended they weren’t there and sped away.

The family was black. On this historic night, there was still so much further to go.

Scott is a third-year law student. His love is lifting you higher, historically speaking.