Leaning against the wall of Seattle’s Paramount Theatre on May 10, I watched with pride as my Inglemoor High biology teacher of two years, Sue Black, strode confidently onto the brightly lit stage, greeting reporters and audience members at a President Obama campaign fund-raiser. I listened, enrapt, as she told of her battle with cancer and I cried as the President embraced her, the emotion of the past week overwhelming me as I sat witness to my teacher turning the floor over to the most powerful man in the world.

As a student, I go to class each day to be greeted by Black’s enthusiasm for her subject and her passion for her students. Seldom do I have the opportunity to consider her political leanings or her personal life. Over the years, however, we’ve developed a friendly relationship. So, when the President embraced her, I stood speechless — not just as her student, but as her friend. And when they came apart, I joined the audience in their applause, momentarily forgetting the camera I had slung across my shoulder and the press crowding me on either side.

At that point, the only thing running through my mind were Black’s comments to me early Monday afternoon, after she received word she would be introducing President Obama.

“Oh my god,” she said. “Oh my god. Austin. I’m introducing the President.”

That “oh my god” rang sharply in my mind as they hugged, Black and Obama, my teacher and my President, a surreal experience to witness and an even more surreal one to partake in.

For her, this was a dream come true. Crediting the President with the ability to keep her insurance, Black considers Obama her hero and this chance to meet him her opportunity to thank him for everything he had done.

“I just kept thinking, ‘this is it, what am I going to say? This is my last opportunity to talk to the President of the United States.’ And at that point, you heard me say, I said, ‘I’m just going to tell him I love him,’ because I really do.”

Black can’t remember what the President said in response and I was too far away to hear it myself, but I think he would have responded in kind.

“There’s not one word I could put on it,” Black said of the entire experience, “Maybe the only description I could give you … is the first time I realized my future husband was in love with me back. Your feet don’t touch the ground.”

Being there, watching her, neither did mine.

Austin Wright-Pettibone is an Inglemoor High senior.