The other day, I was at the county office to renew my tag and get a “Real ID” driver’s license. Online, I’d checked the requirements for everything I needed. I came prepared.

The conversations between other customers and clerks revealed that some of them were not quite as prepared. They’d made an appointment for the wrong category and would have to reschedule. They didn’t have the necessary paperwork. Their driver’s license had been suspended and they had to go to the clerk of the court to remedy that. They didn’t have the money. They were waiting for someone, something, the universe, a ride, whatever. It was a rush of conflicts— many of the same conflicts I faced in my early life.

The younger woman next to me asked what she was supposed to write on the form when she didn’t have a physical address. The clerk said she could use General Delivery, but she didn’t explain it well or even completely. I knew about General Delivery because that’s the way I used to be able to send letters to my father when he was alive.

About General Delivery, the younger woman said, “I ain’t never heard of that.” She used the address of the friend who’d driven her. The clerk asked her about renewing her voter’s registration, which in Florida is part of the driver’s license and state ID process. She said, “I ain’t voted since Obama,” and laughed. She was somewhere near the age of my three eldest children. And I thought, She doesn’t believe that she has power.

I said, “You should vote.”

She looked at me and said, “What?” She was surprised, like maybe I wasn’t talking to her, but to someone else.

Growing up, I was a child of a single mother of three. We lived on food stamps, free lunches, government financial support for dependent children, and my mother’s earnings as a waitress.

I had no self-confidence, no belief that I deserved as much as anyone else. I learned from those around me that we born poor and powerless and we would die that way. And I’m White. That’s a level of privilege on its own, of course, but I didn’t understand that then.

“You should vote,” I said again. “Democrats need you.”

She did not renew her voter’s registration.

I imagined that she voted before because like her, President Obama is Black; she might have surmised that her vote would only be meaningful when stacked up with other Black votes; and her vote was going to empower Black people. (These are the reasons I imagined she had.) And if those were her reasons, she was successful— to a point. Barack Obama’s first victory in a U.S. Presidential election was a huge victory for all Black Americans, not to mention his second.

But that’s not the end of the fight.

I wanted to tell this woman, “I’ve met President Obama. He would ask you to vote.” That was true. I thought mentioning President Obama would mean something to her. Then I thought it would sound like I was 1.) lying, or 2.) bragging.

In the elevator on my way down from the 16th floor, I realized it would be more powerful if I told her that I had met both Barack and Michelle Obama and that they would both urge her not to give up the greatest power she has not only as an American but as a Black American, and as a female— her voice. Her will. Because it’s as important as anyone else’s. Maybe that would have persuaded her to vote again.

As I walked across the busy downtown street, I thought about turning back and waiting in the lobby of the building. Surely she would be moved if she thought of Michelle Obama. But I didn’t turn back.

I’ve been upset with myself ever since for not talking with her again.

My poet husband, an English Lit professor for a few decades and the reason I met the Obamas, read my fifth draft of this post, which I thought was my last draft. I didn’t agree with any of his editorial suggestions.

We talked for quite some time.

In rejecting his proposed revisions over and over again, I came to realize why I didn’t speak up: Because my younger self in my generally bereft life wouldn’t have listened to my present self. None of what I thought of saying to this woman would have influenced her, because my younger self would have thought, You don’t know me. Keep out of it. You’re not doing anything for me, and this has nothing to do with you. And my younger self was White, while this woman is Black.

Privilege cuts both ways: it can work for us and against us.

Mostly through higher education, I found a life leading me out of poverty and to a place at the table.

“With ability comes responsibility,” the age-old saying goes.

But with that ability, I lose the credibility that I had when when I was sitting outside on the back porch steps, waiting and wishing, saying what I wanted to say to whomever I wanted to say it to.