Friday, September 18, 2009

An American Moment

I bum a cigarette from my "white boy rapper" co-worker and go down to the parking lot. I see the Puerto Rican building manager and parking lot attendant poring over a magazine. The German woman who works at the bakery rushes over and tells them that she'll move her car. She does. But the Jewish woman who owns the building and the lot yell at the Puerto Ricans because the Nigerian Wolof bakery manager's truck is still blocking the parking lot's back entrance. She walks off and then turns, looks down, and screws her face up in disgust. The Middle Eastern Domino's driver has thrown his prayer rug behind his pick up truck and is prostrating himself to Mecca. All the while, my Togoan co-worker is chatting on his cell phone, sitting in his Vietnamese manager's minivan. I pull on my cigarette, thinking of that Kenyan President of ours, and my Jamerican ass suddenly thinks, "We gotta take our country back!"

I'm gonna go join a Tea Party as soon as I'm done posting this.

5 comments:

jadedj said...

Nah, I don't believe it...you wouldn't. Would you?

Cwybrow said...

Really? Enjoy the non-wite.

Cujo359 said...

This country's always changing, and so are its people. That's one of the best things about it.

nunya said...

I'm still grinning. Thanks.

Glennis said...

Yeah. We're the same in California. On my way to the Sinaloan seafood place, we passed the Burmese Halal restaurant, and wondered if I had time to get my brows shaped at the Indian beauty parlor down the road, across the street from the pupusa joint. Would we finish our meal in time to meet our friends at the Kuchipudi dance recital?

The other weekend we went to an ersatz Scandinavian festival, started in the '40s by a Chamber of Commerce in a small town, and enjoyed traditional foods such as barbecued tri-tip wrapped in tortillas. We had abelskiver for breakfast.

People who are afraid of other cultures are missing out on a lot of good stuff, the least of which is great food.