Walking with Whitey
It's a grim future for whitey. In the purple dusk he walks and curses those who do not know how to use a sidewalk: the left side walkers: Bohemians and drug addicts, the same pace walkers: stalkers, the three abreast walkers: lousy teenagers, and the cyclists: bicyclists.
"God damn you," he thinks. "Walk on the right side. Walk slower or faster than me. Walk single file -- there's mud around. Bike on the street like everyone else. Risk death like everyone else. You're not special. You're not even white."
Oh, no whitey. Oh, ugly whitey. You're going to fail, and then you're going to seek revenge, maybe inspired by Cheney's book, and then you're going to fail spectacularly. The world does not move according to your order. The world does not have manners. The world is chaos, and you must learn to find delight in that chaos, in strange and foreign experiences, in confusion and terror and tacos. But I see you can't. You can't get mud on your pants. You won't.
I'm sorry. I regret that I can't help. I'm busy not becoming you.
---
"God damn you," he thinks. "Walk on the right side. Walk slower or faster than me. Walk single file -- there's mud around. Bike on the street like everyone else. Risk death like everyone else. You're not special. You're not even white."
Oh, no whitey. Oh, ugly whitey. You're going to fail, and then you're going to seek revenge, maybe inspired by Cheney's book, and then you're going to fail spectacularly. The world does not move according to your order. The world does not have manners. The world is chaos, and you must learn to find delight in that chaos, in strange and foreign experiences, in confusion and terror and tacos. But I see you can't. You can't get mud on your pants. You won't.
I'm sorry. I regret that I can't help. I'm busy not becoming you.
---
Labels: walking home
posted by JMH | 7:31 PM
9 Comments:
This is funny for many reasons but mostly the phenomenological and cosmic ones.
It's illegal to walk three abreast where I'm from.
Thanks, jorg. I try to be cosmic, and once I bought a book on the phenomenological argument for God's existence but I never read it. It was dry. I like my books full of juice, juiciness.
How could you enforce the three abreast law?
The phenomenological argument for God's existence is a boring one, but apparently it's not boring when applied to whitey (a euphemism for God?).
I imagine to enforce it they hire plainclothes police men who walk around armed and if they see anyone breaking the law they try shooting them.
They'd be best served to shoot one of the people walking on the ends. The middle person is probably not breaking the law.
I'm beginning to sound like whitey...
Fell in some mud a week ago :-)
What are you going to do? Dirt and water -- you just can't keep them apart. It would be crazy to try.
The middle person is usually safest, unless you happen to be in an orgy.
great writing! this is a very high conversation you are having with the other commenter. but i just wanted to show how dumb i am by saying simply that
i dislike it greatly when, walking in a public place, people will not pass or hang back. it makes me really uncomfortable :-).
Thank you. Yeah, there's very little in the walking world more uncomfortable than walking at a very similar pace as a stranger, so you're next to each other for what seems like five minutes, trying not to look at each other. In that case, it's best to just sprain an ankle.
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