The fallacy of a human system to prevent hate.
Within an hour of waking up thursday I found myself in the empty grass lot beside the carwash. I was dressed rather sharply (meaning that I was wearing a shirt that appeared to have been ironned) and so was Brandon who was acting as my caddy as I used my 5-wood to hit packets of various condiments at the side of my car.
Co-worker: "What the hell are you doing?"
Brandon: "Quiet on the green please."
Me: "I'm just here to pick up my check. Hey, J.C., can I wash my car?"
J.C.: "Hell no."
The carwash is prone to such strange scenes. It has been visited by every manner of freak and weirdo known to man (including myself). Some are good and some are bad but they all have something to teach you. The most recent lesson was delivered sunday by a group of neanderthals with thick New York accents.
The runt of the litter was a repulsive little wiry man who looked a lot like James Dean... ya know... dead. His comb glided effortlessly through his hair as a result of the frictionless environment created by the pint of grease that I am almost positive came from a can although there is a decent chance that the slimy little bastard oozed it himself. In his native burrough he is probably called something trite and cliche like "Bones" or "Tiny".
His brother was simply a larger, healthier looking version of the former. He constantly sucked on a toothpick that seemed to be almost surgically attached to the corner of his mouth. Together they looked like a pair that the mob would hire out on occassion to do dirty work and use as scapegoats. The kind of guys that "don't know nothin'" if asked.
They were at the carwash with their cousin who was getting his brand-new 300M cleaned. The cousin was a large man of about fifty with such an incredible surplus of fat that it caused his facial features to be pushed into a perpetual scowl. He was impatient and rarely sat down while awaiting his car. Instead he lumbered around on legs that were far too small to support the mass of human that sat atop them. A true feat of mind over matter.
There car came out of the tunnel a little lower on the left side than it was on the right due to two completely flat tires. Upon realizing this all three of them began throwing out words like "lawyer" and "lawsuit" that were meant to intimidate the managers had there been any around. But since I was the only one in the vicinity with any kind of authority and I didn't really give a shit they were just intimidating the employees and one other elderly customer.
The manager eventually arrived as well as the carwash's owner, Doug, who was just recovering from some sort of heart ailment. Doug began to talk to the man and I watched as the situation slowly escalated to the point that both men were weaving intricate strings of profanity less than ten inches away from each other while Doug was popping nitroglycerin tablets. I was instructed to call 9-1-1 and try to get a sheriff's deputy to appear.
"9-1-1 What's your emergency?"
"Well, it's a non-emergency but we have a belligerent customer at Crystal Blue Carwash, 8121 Market Street in Porter's Neck."
"Near Medac?"
"Yes."
"You say he's belligerent?"
"Yes."
"Is he black?"
"What?"
"Umm... I mean... What's his race?"
"Uh... he's white."
"What is he wearing?"
The conversation continued from there. I gave a brief description that included the phrase "he's gonna be the pissed off guy who is NOT wearing a uniform."
I hung up the phone and pondered the conversation that I had just had while watching the live-action version of everything reality shows try to capture but always fall short of. Faces turning unnatural colors. Innocent bystanders being struck by errant spittle. In that one particular moment in time I felt a total absence of all love. Why do people tune in by the millions to watch this? Why did the 9-1-1 operator assume that it was a black guy?
The system is broken... if it ever worked to begin with. Unhappiness breeds unhappiness.
On an off-note, there was a rally recently in Hughe McRae Park in which more than a thousand people who were mostly of hispanic descent (probably all lumped together as "mexicans" during idle talk around the water cooler) gathered to protest Bush's latest method of distraction, a push for a mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Looking around I realized that I was one of only five white people in my field of vision; a woman sitting peacefully on the grass to my left and three large white men to my right holding a giant banner that read "SOMEONE CALL IMMIGRATION".
"Goddamnit..." I muttered to myself and left.
Point to ponder. Humans have only been around for roughly 100,000 years. This means that all of the races share a common ancestor at some point in the past hundred millenia. Not really a long time. The common ancestor for dogs and humans goes back billions of years and we consider them "man's best friend" while we hate other races.
People say the races hate each other because they deem each other as "different" but aparently they just aren't different enough.
Co-worker: "What the hell are you doing?"
Brandon: "Quiet on the green please."
Me: "I'm just here to pick up my check. Hey, J.C., can I wash my car?"
J.C.: "Hell no."
The carwash is prone to such strange scenes. It has been visited by every manner of freak and weirdo known to man (including myself). Some are good and some are bad but they all have something to teach you. The most recent lesson was delivered sunday by a group of neanderthals with thick New York accents.
The runt of the litter was a repulsive little wiry man who looked a lot like James Dean... ya know... dead. His comb glided effortlessly through his hair as a result of the frictionless environment created by the pint of grease that I am almost positive came from a can although there is a decent chance that the slimy little bastard oozed it himself. In his native burrough he is probably called something trite and cliche like "Bones" or "Tiny".
His brother was simply a larger, healthier looking version of the former. He constantly sucked on a toothpick that seemed to be almost surgically attached to the corner of his mouth. Together they looked like a pair that the mob would hire out on occassion to do dirty work and use as scapegoats. The kind of guys that "don't know nothin'" if asked.
They were at the carwash with their cousin who was getting his brand-new 300M cleaned. The cousin was a large man of about fifty with such an incredible surplus of fat that it caused his facial features to be pushed into a perpetual scowl. He was impatient and rarely sat down while awaiting his car. Instead he lumbered around on legs that were far too small to support the mass of human that sat atop them. A true feat of mind over matter.
There car came out of the tunnel a little lower on the left side than it was on the right due to two completely flat tires. Upon realizing this all three of them began throwing out words like "lawyer" and "lawsuit" that were meant to intimidate the managers had there been any around. But since I was the only one in the vicinity with any kind of authority and I didn't really give a shit they were just intimidating the employees and one other elderly customer.
The manager eventually arrived as well as the carwash's owner, Doug, who was just recovering from some sort of heart ailment. Doug began to talk to the man and I watched as the situation slowly escalated to the point that both men were weaving intricate strings of profanity less than ten inches away from each other while Doug was popping nitroglycerin tablets. I was instructed to call 9-1-1 and try to get a sheriff's deputy to appear.
"9-1-1 What's your emergency?"
"Well, it's a non-emergency but we have a belligerent customer at Crystal Blue Carwash, 8121 Market Street in Porter's Neck."
"Near Medac?"
"Yes."
"You say he's belligerent?"
"Yes."
"Is he black?"
"What?"
"Umm... I mean... What's his race?"
"Uh... he's white."
"What is he wearing?"
The conversation continued from there. I gave a brief description that included the phrase "he's gonna be the pissed off guy who is NOT wearing a uniform."
I hung up the phone and pondered the conversation that I had just had while watching the live-action version of everything reality shows try to capture but always fall short of. Faces turning unnatural colors. Innocent bystanders being struck by errant spittle. In that one particular moment in time I felt a total absence of all love. Why do people tune in by the millions to watch this? Why did the 9-1-1 operator assume that it was a black guy?
The system is broken... if it ever worked to begin with. Unhappiness breeds unhappiness.
On an off-note, there was a rally recently in Hughe McRae Park in which more than a thousand people who were mostly of hispanic descent (probably all lumped together as "mexicans" during idle talk around the water cooler) gathered to protest Bush's latest method of distraction, a push for a mass deportation of illegal immigrants. Looking around I realized that I was one of only five white people in my field of vision; a woman sitting peacefully on the grass to my left and three large white men to my right holding a giant banner that read "SOMEONE CALL IMMIGRATION".
"Goddamnit..." I muttered to myself and left.
Point to ponder. Humans have only been around for roughly 100,000 years. This means that all of the races share a common ancestor at some point in the past hundred millenia. Not really a long time. The common ancestor for dogs and humans goes back billions of years and we consider them "man's best friend" while we hate other races.
People say the races hate each other because they deem each other as "different" but aparently they just aren't different enough.
posted by Seth Parham at 1:26 PM
1 Comments:
You write entries like this and you work at a car wash?!
Why aren't you publishing books, man?
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