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I, like many other residence of Flagstaff, was asked to participate in a household travel survey last week. This was to depict the experiences and patterns of the average person while driving around our town.
These are the results of my survey.
Thursday, 9:06 AM:
When driving to school this morning, cut off by yippee (my name for a person who owns a black Excursion with a bumper sticker that says ‘save the trees’). Yippee comes within approximately 2 feet of front bumper when cutting me off. I pass the Excursion to the left hand side, beep twice, and after obtaining driver’s attention, display my right middle finger for him to see.
Driver retaliates by rolling down window and throwing large peanut butter and banana smoothie at my passenger side window. Smoothie container is destroyed upon impact, dispersing its contents about the entire right side of my vehicle.
No comment on how the flavor of the smoothie was ascertained.
10:15 AM:
While traveling behind Subaru Outback, I was forced to slam on my brakes to avoid a collision with said vehicle when it suddenly stops for no apparent reason. I glance in rear view mirror to notice that six vehicles brake and swerve to avoid a collision with each other and myself. Two of the vehicles behind me veer into oncoming traffic, narrowly adverting an accident with a motorcycle and a 16-wheeler. Two others swerve to the right. One goes off the road, the other stops just in time to avoid hitting a rather large pine tree. In my estimation, at least 7 people are nearly killed or seriously wounded.
Two seconds later, the reason the driver ahead of me stopped suddenly becomes obvious. A squirrel appears from the front of the Outback, and attempts to cross the street. Squirrel is then hit by opposing traffic.
10:33 AM:
I receive text message from classmate who previously requested assistance with homework problem in calculus. Classmate previously tried to convince me that I was wrong about a certain point that I had showed her on the problem. She had sent me the text message to explain that I was right and to apologize.
I attempt to respond to the message, while driving and not paying attention to the words that I was typing. I attempt to type phrase “I told you!” but somehow, it comes out “I love you!” I do not become aware of the mistake until she types back “I love you too!” By this time, the damage has been done. I am now being stalked by a 19 year old obese woman with three children.
11:45 AM:
I make the mistake of jumping on the freeway to make a “quick” trip to Target. I-40 westbound is backed up like a clogged toilet for 120 minutes. I take advantage of the time, traveling at less than 5 mph the entire trip, to finish my homework, balance my checkbook and play Lumines. I finally reach my destination at 1:50 PM.
2:30 PM:
Waiting for a light to turn, a cute blonde girl around my age in a red Focus pulls along my left side. She looks over and waves, I wave back. She smiles, I smile back. She starts making kissy faces at me; I write down my number and hold it against the window. She takes down my number and waves again. The light finally turns green and we both drive away.
My girlfriend is less than impressed. She slaps the back of my head and calls me some rather vulgar names. I loose my handle on the fresh cup of coffee I had just purchased at the Starbucks inside of Target. All 24 ounces of the piping hot coffee spill into my lap, causing burns and blisters.
I cry, girlfriend laughs.
Friday, 7:33 AM:
Now at work, God punishes finger used to flip-off yippee by lacerating it. I am working on computer, replacing a burnt-out power supply. Upon attempting to remove the wires from the motherboard, I jerk the wires away, forcing finger into sharp edge of case. Finger is punctured, causing bleeding for 5-10 minutes, as well as tainting the 26-year-old perfect safety record of my IT department.
I have over the years, taken much offence to the fact that due to my last name and the color of my skin, I have wrongfully been accused as an expert in certain things. A short list of the talents that have been falsely associated with my skill set are; picking grapes; fitting 40 people into a Volkswagen; swimming across rivers; jumping fences; digging tunnels; making tamales; and drug trafficking.
Although most things I have taken with a grain of salt, the one thing over the years that still irks me is the fact that a good portion of the people that I have met over the years have expected me to speak Spanish simply by the assumptions that have been made by looking at me.
I have never been able to speak the Spanish language. God knows that my parents, especially my mother, tried like hell to teach me the language. My mom speaks the language fluently, having learned it at a young age along with English. My father doesn’t exactly speak it fluently, he does however, understand it well enough to comprehend what my mom is trying to hide from her sons when she starts in on one of her rants.
Like any good set of parents, they only wanted to provide a better, more comfortable childhood than the ones they had. This led them to purchasing a home in a relatively stable, small, upper middle-class, predominately white community. The situation did not allow for a lot of the use of Spanish, unless you counted the ritual ordering of a burrito or tostada at the neighborhood Taco Bell.
In a four year span covering Junior High and High School, I managed to take 8 semesters of the language without failing one of them, but never getting anything other than a B. I am more than convinced that the only reason I did that well was that my parents paid my teachers to get me through, not wanting to bear the shame of having the only Hispanic son in the school who flunked his Spanish classes.
Entering 12th grade, after years of education, three different teachers, and some unknown thousands of dollars spent by my parents, I was no better off than I was when I started. I was, at most times, able to conjugate verbs solely based on a simple chart that had been browbeaten into me. My pronunciation made me sound like I was Keanu Reeves, in a Spanish version of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…
“Yo quiero mas nachos, dude!”
“Dammit, Jake, stop saying ‘dude’!”
My sentence formation wasn’t much better. It was as if I was a third grader who knew how to count to 100, but was completely convinced that 30+70 equaled eleventeen. In fact, one of my Spanish teachers once had a meeting with my parents and the Vice Principal of my High School to discuss the possibility that I might have a learning disability.
When I spoke to my Guidance Counselor as to what my options for a major would be as I was preparing for college, the choice was rather easy…
“So what lets me out of a foreign language prerequisite?”
“Well, Jake, there’s engineering, and…”
“I’ll take it!”
By 17, I was convinced that I would never have to deal with the subject or situation again. I had my plan laid out, my entrance tests were complete, my school and major were selected, and I had been accepted and given a scholarship. My life was on cruise control, and I had no reason to worry about Spanish again. That is, until one morning in April.
I was sitting in my Advanced Placement American Government class, discussing the questionable morality of the actions of the ACLU, when a darker skinned, older woman stepped into the room. She spoke with some of the worst broken English I had heard in my life. It was in fact, so bad, that I have no way of describing it visually.
“I need Jakob.”
“Excuse me, there is no Jakob, but my name is Jake.”
I am indeed aware that I misspelled my own first name, but that’s how she pronounced it. The name Jacob sounds different depending on how you chose to enunciate the letters and read the word. This particular woman decided to make it sound Swedish, rather than taking the straight Spanish translation of Jocobo, which was odd considering she spoke as if she just crossed the border.
We started walking down the hall, her, another minority student that was pulled out of the class, and I. The two of us were rather confused, considering the facts that neither one of us had been in an ounce of trouble, and the rather random person removing us from our AP class had no discernable authority and sounded as if she needed remedial English lessons.
“Ma’am, what is this about? I am in the middle of a rather important class, and with all due respect I don’t appreciate the interruption.”
“You need a test.”
“What kind of test?”
“It’s for your English, for your graduation.”
“You mean an English proficiency test?”
“Yeah, that is it.”
I have been known over the years, for a complete inability to keep my mouth shut when challenged by any form of authority. I have been called staunchly indignant and the type of person who will do the opposite of what I am told, just to prove a point.
“The fuck I do lady! I’m going back to the class that you interrupted. It sounds to me like you are the one who needs to take the test!”
“For your graduation…”
“If need be, I’ll speak with the Superintendent of the district. But for now, you can take the test your damn self!”
I realize that the situation was out of her control, and I realize that she was just doing her job. I just needed a way to vent, and that seemed as good as any. I had never been so insulted in my life. Considering the fact that my SAT scores were high enough to have me recruited by Ivy League schools, and my English grades in school were exemplary, higher than those of my Spanish grades, I was well aware that I was singled out due to my Hispanic last name.
Two classes later, she tried again, thinking that I had calmed down and was going to be more cooperative. This time, I dragged her to the Principal’s office. With my guns drawn and firing, I confronted the Principal.
“What the hell is this about? They want me to take some sort of English proficiency test!”
“I’m sorry Jake, I know how this looks…”
“Do you? It makes the staff of this district look like a bunch of assholes!”
The random Hispanic woman chose this time to pipe in with her two cents…
“For your graduation…”
“I am not taking the test, and I am walking with my friends. If there is going to be a problem with that, I can take it up with the Superintendent, clear?”
My Principal, always the voice of reason, apologized for the incident and assured me that the matter was settled. The administrator of the test was still a little confused by the situation.
“What is this word, clear?”
My friends have at times, been no different than the random people I have encountered, assuming that there is some Spanish gene that is passed down over the generations. Almost same way that hair color and eye color would be passed down, my friends expected that I popped out of the womb able to have fluent conversations with Mexican nationals.
This was never more apparent than a day trip with a couple of friends into the Mexican side of Nogales. My friends had picked out an ugly blanket that no self respecting Mexican would own, and decided that it would look great draped over their couch. Unsure how to begin negotiations, they turned to me.
“Jake, you talk to them.”
“Why me?”
“Well, you’re Mexican, right?”
“Yeah, man, we have a secret handshake and everything! You had better turn around; we don’t like white people to see it…”
“I didn’t mean anything by-“
“Oh shit, dude I forgot my card!”
“What car-“
“My race card! I usually keep it with my Green Card, but fuck it if I didn’t forget that too!”
“Jake, you’re a fucking-“
“Hey, you’re blonde haired, blue eyed! Can you speak German?”
“You know the answer to that-“
“Can you speak German?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought!”
I turned my head and scoffed.
“Retraso de mierda…”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
I hate Christmas.
Ok, I take it back, I don’t necessarily hate Christmas, but the ‘Holiday Season’ as a whole makes me want to hang myself. Call me what you will, but I think a lot of us have lost the spirit of the holidays.
I remember when it was good enough to have the occasional Christmas carol in a department store a couple of weeks before the big day came along. I remember when the ‘Season’ didn’t start until after Thanksgiving, and not right before Halloween. I can remember, not so long ago, when saying ‘Merry Christmas’ was considered a nice thing to say, and not as offensive as a racial epithet. I remember when Christmas wasn’t a bad word.
I love Christmas morning. I enjoy being with the ones I love, sharing gifts, stories, and meals in a dimly lit living room under the glow of the Christmas tree. I love the look on my brother’s faces when they open a gift that they really wanted, and they were sure that they weren’t going to get. There is nothing like being with good friends and family on Christmas.
It’s the month BEFORE the day that drives me nuts.
Every single year since the e-business boom, I have sworn to myself that I was going to start doing all of my shopping online six weeks before Christmas so that I can have everything in and wrapped two weeks out. Every single year, I end up doing none of my shopping online, and taking so long to decide what I am going to buy people, my shopping never gets finished until a couple of days before the 25th.
I have spent so much time in department stores over the past couple weeks that I am seriously considering starting my shopping for next year online in January. I have only a finite amount of patience left for the big box stores. The places I have been to have become so crowded recently that you can’t get past someone without smelling the Caesar salad they had for lunch. People seem as if they are standing in aisles, waiting from instructions from a higher power. I swear sometimes, I just want to drop my shoulder like a full back and run them the hell over.
There is only so much I can take. At work, on the radio, in the mall, and the department stores all I hear are Christmas carols. It is nice to hear once and a while, but just like any music, when it is browbeaten into me it makes me want to scream. If you play some of the songs backwards, I am pretty sure you can hear ‘buy more crap, buy more crap!’ being said over and over again. I wouldn’t even mind if the carols were traditional, sung by traditional artists with talent, like Bing Crosby, or Nat King Cole. But if I hear the rap version of ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’ again, I am going to start carrying earplugs with me to the mall.
People are savages when it comes to getting the perfect gift. They tend to be a bit more cordial and civil when it comes to gifts for adults, but if the gift is for a child, they become Neanderthals, willing to fight to the death. A few weeks ago, two grown men were arrested after an altercation waiting in line to purchase XBOX 360’s. Just the other day, I was witness to two rather rational-looking adults in a shouting match at my local Target for the last ‘whatever doll is popular this year’. They each seemed to be holding on to the doll like two opposing centers, trying to pry a basketball out of the others hands. I looked at them and imagined the victor watching their daughter opening the gift, and then realizing that she finds the box more interesting than the doll they fought for. I think of the kind of example they set for their children when they are at home.
There is no better example of what frustrates me than the people at Wal-Mart. The fellow customers I have run into are some of the most rude, self-involved, inconsiderate people I have ever met. I have a practice of looking at most of my shopping as linear. I get what I am looking for, I purchase it, and I get out. A great deal of people, especially at Wal-Mart, don’t realize that there are a great deal of people like me. It doesn’t bother me that people like to browse, that’s absolutely fine with me. But for the love of God, stop staring from the middle of the aisles where everyone walks. Some people are just oblivious to the fact that other people exist.
I can’t wait until Christmas Eve. I can’t wait to sit down by the fire with my family and my girlfriend and relax for the first time in a month, no longer worrying about what present I am going to get whom, and wanting to do my shopping at 3 A.M. to avoid the crowds. But most of all, I can’t wait for Christmas Eve so I can sit down by the fire with my family and girlfriend, just to enjoy their company.
Until then, if you are at a store and you hear Jack Johnson playing softly, and rattling coming your way, turn to me and wave. I won’t be able to hear you with the earphones and the Tylenol I keep in my pocket for the ‘Holiday Season Headaches’ I get might be kicking in. Try not to take it personal if I don’t say ‘hi’ or stop to chat, it’s not you, it’s just the spirit of the season.
