Asked to imagine a day of anonymity, Obama talks of grocery shopping, ice-cream

There’s a lot that Barack Obama has. But he will never have anonymity. Recently, media outlet root.com asked the former US president to imagine a day of freedom from fame.

Obama’s answer was bland, unlike his recently released book, ‘A Promised Land’.

“You know, honestly, I’d just take a walk,” Obama said. “Go to the grocery store. Go out to dinner with Michelle. Maybe get some ice cream. Around my second or third year in office, I’d have this recurring dream, maybe once every six months, where I’m walking down the street and head into a coffee shop or a bar or something and nobody recognizes me. It was great!”

Ice-cream has a long association with Obama. His first summer job was at a Baskin Robbins in Hawaii. In a LinkedIn post, Obama had described his work as “brutal on the wrist.” But, he said, “it taught me some valuable lessons. Responsibility. Hard work. Balancing a job with friends, family, and school. While I may have lost my taste for ice cream after one too many free scoops, I’ll never forget that job — or the people who gave me that opportunity — and how they helped me get to where I am today”

Obama said he did not mind being recognised, but was not a fan of selfies.

“It’s not so much a security issue as it is the tyranny of selfies,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, people could not be nicer, and I love having a cool conversation. One of my favorite parts of campaigning, which I also miss, was being able to go into people’s living rooms, meeting them on their front porches, and they’d tell me about their lives. But I’m not about the selfies. I guess that’s a high-class problem to have. As a friend once told me, it’s just the price of living out your dreams, which is a pretty good way of looking at it.”