My Night At The Statehouse

 So I’m in the Prince George’s County Youth Commissioners. They are a group of teenagers that were specially picked for their community service, grades and other criteria. We represent each public high school, and each large private high school. We weigh in on things in PG County that affect teenagers like us. So like last week, on March 5, 2011, we went as a group to the Maryland Statehouse. I really did not know what to expect, I figured that we would go, get a tour of the statehouse, eat dinner somewhere and leave. Boy was I wrong… lol. So I got to the Prince George’s County Administration Building ( where we were meeting to get taken there)at 4:30pm, outside the building was a “The Bus” bus, I ignored it, figuring it was just picking  up passengers. So I went inside the building and found Mrs. Harris, the head of the Youth Commissioners and we went downstairs to get on the bus, it actually was “The Bus” bus! I was shocked; the county had set aside a special metro bus just for us! We got on and waited for about 15 minutes for the rest of the people to arrive, and then we were off. We got to the Statehouse at about 5:45, when we got there we went inside a smaller building, that state committees met in, I forget what it was called, we watched about a 10 minute video about Maryland’s ____ branch and how it worked. I was thinking in my head “Ok yea it’s definitely just a typical tour.” After we finished our video we met our tour guide and she walked us to the main building of the statehouse. I had absolutely no idea that there were miles of underground tunnels under the Maryland Statehouse, so we walked through those tunnels to something called the Bill Room. It was where every bill that had ever been passed since the beginning of American History was stored, the best part about it, you could have a copy of any bill that had ever been passed for free. I was going to ask for one, but we didn’t have time. From there we went upstairs to the main building where the House of Representatives room and the Senate room were. We went inside both since they weren’t in session at the moment. From there we went to the old House of Representative and senate room (The ones that were used during the Revolutionary and Civil War). They were being renovated. By this time it was probably about 6:45, so we went to get something to eat, the tour guide and Mrs. Harris just told us to follow them, so we did. Little did we know what was about to happen. They took us to a large reception that was going on, with about 400 people in attendance, most of them people in politics, most of the PG county commissioners were there, as was the governor of Prince George’s county, and many senators and representatives. We were led to the front, where Senator Benson introduced us to the group, and personally thanked each of us for our service. Afterwards we ate dinner and traveled back to the Senate Room, so we could watch a session. About 10 minutes into the session a freakishly large, super buff security woman, came over to where we were sitting and told us to come with her, we thought we had done something or were in trouble, but she took us outside, and told us that we were being recognized by the senate, and that the President of the Senate was going to introduce us, She took us out onto the Senate floor, where the President of the Senate introduced us, the Senators gave us a round of applause and then the media took a bunch of pictures…. Idk if we are gonna be on the news or in any papers. Then we were taken back to our seats, where we sat back down and watched the rest of the session. The session that we were in they were discussing 2 bills. The first one was a normal one. It was a bill that would raise the pay of Maryland’s judges by 7 percent over a period of 3 years, in order to raise the pay of Maryland’s judges (who were already making 6 figures), they were going to lower the pay of Maryland’s teachers. The Senate voted against that bill. The second one however was super weird. It was a bill that if passed, would allow people who had died to be posthumously harvested for their sperm and eggs. I think that they were also talking about whether or not the children created by the harvested eggs and sperm should get any of the dead parents will. We left before they finished debating that bill, so idk if it got passed.  Well anyway that was my awesome night at the Maryland Statehouse.
2012 Adam Edwards ©