One sunny day in 2048 I will be sitting in a futuristic living room filled with gadgets that will be turned on and off with just a conversation with a computer. I will order dinner with our hologram picture phone. Our hover-craft car will be hovering quietly in the post consumer material made garage. Our robot butler will not look or act like a robot, because by 2048 robots will look human and yet only want to fold your laundry which in the future will not be done in water by with solar blasting-- kills the germs faster and more effectively.

And in 2048 my grandchildren will come visit their grandpas(because Grandpa Byron finally found the man of his dreams in his late twenties/early thirties after he became famous for writing two books that changed the world and having that television show that was offered to him) from the moon(since one of our sons will get a job there after Earth finally colonized it in 2027.).

The kids will float in on their Back to the Future inspired Hover Boards wearing crazy outfits that Grandpa Byron will never judge because he will always appreciate style and "whatever those crazy young people are wearing these days." And they will sit around Grandpa Byron while Grandpa Byron wears his futuristic Prada loafers and because the moon's grade schools are quite advanced and future kids in fifth grade have to write term papers about the crazy past, one of Grandpa Byron's grand kids will ask him:

"Grandpa Byron, what was it like to be there when they elected the first African American president... why was it such a big deal? You always talk about the forty-fourth president! I mean... why did people care so much... people are just people... and numbers are just numbers, right?"

And that is when Grandpa Byron will go in to his giant walk-in closet from the future, pull out a dusty box and set it in the middle of his grandchildren.

"Grandpa... is that... is that... is that paper?" The little boy will gasp in shock. "I thought paper didn't exist anymore!"

I will laugh. I will bend down grabbing my back a little from it's old man ache and I will open the box. I will pull out a journal from November forty years ago and turn to the page that my twenty-six- year-old self had taken notes in about the event of his lifetime that he had brought to the bar with him while he watched an election that changed the way he looked at his country. That changed the way he looked at the future. An election that made him cry for the first time ever. An election that actually made him listen to the speeches and think of the little future rugrats that were sitting in front of him, now, in 2048.

And because Grandpa Byron will be stoic (years of life lessons have made him this way) he will say: "Once, before Grandpa Byron was married to your grandpa and when paper was still written on and when people didn't think Global Warming was totally true(this part the grandkids will laugh at!) your Grandpa Byron didn't believe in lucky numbers. See, people who had lucky numbers were strange. But on that day, forty-four seemed to say something to him. It was the number of Mr. President Obama in office. It was a number that made him realize that maybe a change is about to come. It was a number that made him feel,again, that luck is nothing but a belief, but when a belief is put back in you that you haven't felt in years... well, that, is a number you carry with you forever and moment you never want to forget."