Here it is in a nutshell: Rep. Rick Larsen held a Town Hall in Everett- the crowd count according to The Seattle Times and The Everett Herald was somewhere between 2,000 to 3,ooo.

Larsen in his opening remarks welcomed the attendees- including the ones who were not from his District , and then we got the ground rules for how the forum would work and with the reminder that if we spent all of our time cheering or jeering that was going to cut into the meeting time.

 So, here’s the deal we had a couple of hours and we could either talk or get all hysterical  for two hours but obviously we  did not have the time to do both.

I know, it’s not exactly a novel idea to spell out the the rules of a meeting but in case you’re not up to date on the Town Hall Situations some of them now  involve guns and death threats and people in tin foil hats  screaming they want their America back ( okay, I made the tin foil hat thing up ) so a crash course in how to behave at these meetings was actually in order.

The Town Hall, which was massive compared to the ones I’ve seen on TV actually took place- people got to ask questions, Larsen got to respond and in between the people who support Health Care Reform and the Teabaggers got to poke each other with sticks but what can I say- there’s a lot of anger out there and a few jabs here and there is probably a lot better then having people tearing signs out of each others hands and getting dragged away by the police  ( fyi- we didn’t see the Police until the end of the meeting when we saw a few of them standing at the bottom of the stairs and one joked that they only came out because they thought they heard someone say ‘doughnuts’)

So how did it begin and how did it end?

That’s actually an interesting story.

It’s started in the Parking Lot a couple of hours before the Town Hall began.

Photo: A.M. MOSCOSO

The Teabaggers set up a table and a sound system and their speakers had prepared speeches- I mean that, they had their speeches printed out and held together with little black paperclips and their leader was wearing a saucy little tricorne hat and with video camera in hand they launched into doing what Teabaggers have been doing to Town Hall Meetings all around the country- they tried to take the meeting over before it even began.

That did not happen here.

I don’t know how it was in the Parking Lots at other Town Halls, but at this particular Town Hall there weren’t just Teabaggers and Birthers and Deathers holding signs, – there was just as many people from Progressive Groups, from Labor, Health-care Workers, Students, ( and even some Grandmas-which contrary to what Sarah Palin may have said: we love our Grandmas and don’t want to kill them so they were confident they could be around us and not have to fear for their lives) holding signs and expressing themselves at the tops of their lungs.

In fact we did that for almost three hours- in a parking lot with no shade under the very hot afternoon sun.

The press would later describe us as an orderly crowd as we filed into the stadium, leaving out the part about how we all wore ourselves out in our very own grown up version of fighting in the school yard during recess. I mean, this was not a college age crowd. It wasn’t even a thirty something crowd. This was a 40 and up crowd and chasing people around a parking lot for a couple of hours who have ticked you straight off of the Globe is really hard work.

So by the time we all got into the Stadium and sat down I noticed that this was the most sitting down crowd I have EVER seen. No one was stalking the aisles. There were a few people walking around with signs but hell, it was nice when they did pass by because at least you got some shade for a few seconds as they went by.

 Not that there wasn’t anger and nutty questions that were asked- but here’s the thing about Snohomish County. Each City in this County will tell you with a straight face that the City next to them is full of people- and here I’ll borrow a line I heard from Stephanie Miller-‘who fell out of the Dumb Tree and hit every single branch on the way down’.

When one of the Teabaggers would get up and hit a GOP talking point or chant, ‘answer the question’ and sound all batty nobody was totally  surprised. What was different was that this time it was controlled insanity. Left on their own some of these people could have asked some truly freaky and weird questions that would have had the writers at Fox News weeping for joy. Those Youtube Moments that could have actually been  material that people would have watched over and over again and passed around to each other because we don’t have things like Traveling Carnivals with the Freak Show you paid one thin dime extra to see anymore. Those truly weird bits of reality were forever lost in the haze created by the fires the Insurance Companies lit.

On one hand I see that as a weird sort of justice, on the other I know exactly how Dr Miles Bennell felt at the end of ” Invasion Of  Body Snatchers’ as he was running around in the middle of traffic warning people that ‘ they’re here already, you’re next!’

 His world only looks the same, but somthing has come from the outside and taken it away from him and he knows that it’s gone forever.

So we had this meeting and I actually learned something.

One is this: if you stand up and say your name is ” John Smith ” at a meeting where anti-government people are out in full force, no matter how far people are from each other on the issues, they will come  together and laugh at you. I also learned that some people in my County really hate ” Illegal Immigrants…read MEXICANS…” From what I was made to understand, they think it’s alright if these people watch their children die because they really shouldn’t be allowed in a hospital under any circumstance  PLUS it might just teach them a lesson about sneaking over that border. Oh FYI they also don’t think much of their neighbors who weren’t smart enough to -as one young woman put it- ” to choose a job that provided the right health insurance’. So I guess she’s saying they can go die with the Mexicans.

We left the meeting just after Rep. Larsen had us stand up and sing ” Take Me Out To The Ballgame “. We were in a ballpark so it made sense.

Photo: A.M. Moscoso

Some of us did it and laughed and called it a day and some of us had no sense of humor and stood up and left.

Maybe why the teabaggers went and told the press that they left early because they weren’t getting their questions answered. I think what they didn’t get was a stage and their five minutes of fame on Fox News.

So I’m going to close this with a little bit of real life from this Town Hall instead of a moment set into motion by the Media or the Insurance Companies.

Photo: A.M. Moscoso

Remember how I told you about the parking lot and how we were all out there chanting and yelling at each other? Well. Nobody would back down or leave, there was this line that was drawn and nobody was going to give an inch in that lot. So by the time we got in and to the Stadium some of us were thirsty.

There were these Pop and Water Vending Machines and you could get a bottle of something cold for three dollars and fifty cents in exact change because the machines had no change to give  back.

So what we did was to figure out who had exact change and we let them go first so that the people who had say five or ten dollar bills could  use the cash they had on hand.

And some people in line didn’t have enough change to buy a bottle of water.

So some of us offered what change we had so that the people who didn’t quite have enough could get something cold to drink.

It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?

Photo: A.M. Moscoso