Things were about to get crazy! You could tell because the girls jumping double Dutch looked like they were flying. Older boys started to strut with a supersonic tilt. When feisty old ladies smiled from chairs on their porches, they seemed to have a thousand teeth. Grits and oatmeal in the morning tasted like ambrosia from the gods. Even the most messed up car on Indiana Avenue seemed to shine like the Milky Way had scrubbed it ten times over. And then there was "The Roar". It had taken over a sliver of the Southside of Chicago called Washington Park where a honey-colored boy, Montgomery "Monty" Carver, was finally making some progress growing an Afro that summer. This Roar was made up of all kinds of sounds.

Applause, cheers, shouts, tears. And people saying things like, "Can you believe it?", "Hallelujah!", "Dude!", "What the what?" and "Man, you lyin'!". It was so loud, it echoed throughout Chicago all the way across Lake Michigan and even the Atlantic Ocean. All of this magic got started back in the winter. Why? You see, there was this other honey-colored guy who was much older than Monty. He was kind of skinny and walked with his own supersonic tilt. He lived just three blocks east of Washington Park so Monty and them just said he lived in Washington Park. He had this ridiculous name "Obama" and it looked like he just might have a chance of becoming the first Black President of the United States! This possibility was so awesome! If you lived on the Southside of Chicago, it was really exciting.

But if you were as close as Washington Park, one of Obama's neighbors as Monty liked to say, then you could hardly breathe. It felt like your cousin or your uncle or someone was about to rule the world and your mind just couldn't handle the idea. Once The Roar began, girls started to smile at Monty everywhere he went. In the hallway at school. In the Dollar Store. In his new tennis class. It was kind of like they liked him or something and.