Full column by Susan Lampert Smith: Time passing by Clinton generation

Finally, Clinton took the stage. I nudged her.

He 's cute, isn 't he?

She was diplomatic: He 's a very nice-looking older man...

Out on the sidewalk was someone else who remembered.

It was another graying Madison icon, marijuana activist Ben Masel, who was sandwiched by Secret Service guys in their sharp suits. Masel was holding up a sign that said, "Where 's Jacki 's medicine? "

The way Masel tells it, Jacki Rickert, who suffers from a painful connective tissue disorder, met Clinton on his 1992 bus trip through Wisconsin, and asked him to legalize marijuana for medical use. Clinton told her, in his husky drawl, I feel your pain.

But when he got into office, the president who didn 't inhale didn 't legalize medical marijuana. Jacki didn 't get her medicine. The rest of us who voted for him didn 't get our health-care reform.

How will the future play out for today 's Obama girls?

I do know this: After two hours on the cold concrete steps of the Stock Pavilion, I felt my own pain.

Where 's my medicine?