Go Ahead, Jon Gosselin, Make My Day

Every morning I go to the same gas station on my way to work.

A few posts back, I found a dog there.

Today, I found a man there.

Well, okay, so I didn't really "find a man" there per se. In fact, we didn't even speak.

I pulled up and got out of my car to purchase my overpriced energy drink of the day. I turned my french rap down so that no one would notice how much of gangster I am. Walking up to the entrance, I tried clicking the door-lock button on my remote to no avail. Something about this particular gas station blocks the signal. Every single day I try to make the doors lock using my clicker and every single day they don't lock. Luckily, I never buy more than a single energy drink and I bring in my wallet, phone and keys, but it makes me uneasy to open the door to the Mapco and never hear the satisfying click of my car doors locking behind me.

On this particular day I was feeling pretty svelte and awesome looking. I was wearing a new blue and white ruffly shirt underneath my black suit jacket tucked into my black criss cross BCBG skirt. Which, by the way, is the only thing I own that could in any way be called designer. I bought it at TJ Maxx for 10 dollars on clearance. In any case, I was wearing an outfit that, in my opinion that morning, made me look both sexy and expensive. So when I opened the door to the Mapco, I noticed a few heads turn.

The usual couple of landscaping Latinos were getting coffee and conchas, those little shell shaped glazed donuts. I had been on a diet for almost three months, and had lost nearly 25 lbs. I reached for the sugar free red bull. Once stepping into line, I was distracted by a older gentleman, maybe in his late sixties, in front of me who seemed very chatty.

"Look at you all dressed up!" He stopped talking to the older lady in front of him and actually tipped his hat to me. "You look so sharp, I gotta let you go in front of me." And he stepped to the side.
"Aw, thanks." I smiled. I did only have that one drink. It wouldn't take but a second for me to pay.
"You must work in an office building. People who work in office buildings don't smile enough. You have a pretty smile."
"Thank you!" I said, and turned just in time to see the guy at the front of the line turn to leave.

I swear he looked just like a skinny, more attractive version of Jon Gosselin. Dark hair with a dark complexion, and deep set eyes. I noticed the eyes first because they slid sideways at me as he pushed open the door. He was dressed nicely enough. A button down shirt and some black pants. I didn't get a good read on the shoes, which always seem to be the most telling article that men wear, but that was all because he kept looking at me, burning a hole through the side of my face as I turned back to the older gentleman.

"Do you smile much at work? I bet you don't. I bet you only smile when the boss is smiling."
I put my drink up on the counter.
"I smile! My boss smiles a lot. Maybe that's why I smile so much."
He was pumping gas outside, I noted, looking through the window.
"People don't smile unless the boss is smiling. Why is that? I want all my employees to smile. All the time. Office people are never happy, are they."
I swiped my card. "Well, they treat me pretty well at my job. So maybe that's why everybody smiles." And the clerk handed me my receipt.
"Well then you've got a good job! Stick with it! But I don't have to tell you that, they'd keep you around just for decoration," the old man said. And he laughed a little too loudly.
"You have a nice day, sir!" I smiled back at him and pushed open the door, myself. I was thinking about what the old man said for a second about how office people never smile. I decided that he was probably a manager at some shop or store, and he was probably a darn good manager, too. I bet he wasn't rich, but he was good people. Like Flannery O'Conner thought was impossible.

The Jon Gosselin lookalike broke my concentration. He was still looking at me from the gas pump. Back and forth, here and there. It wasn't a creepy steady gaze or anything. Just an I'm-letting-you-know-I'm-looking kind of thing. He looked professional. He looked nice. And established. He looked down to shut his gas cap, and I smiled to myself, hopping into my unlocked car. I left the door open for a few seconds and made room in my cup holder for the very unhealthy Red Bull I was about to drink.
Glancing up at my rear view mirror, I saw the back end of his black Honda drive off.

Even though we never spoke, he had already made my day.

It was almost overkill when I passed his car heading toward the turn lane and caught him looking for me again. And the last time I saw him, he passed my car on his way around a corner. In my peripheral vision, he was STILL eyeing me.

Okay, so you might find that a bit creepy. But it made my day. Compliments and open gawkers? Bring it on. At this low weight, which I haven't been since a bit after college, I expect these things. And I revel in them.

Frankly, though, if Jon Gosselin had spoken to me, I would have spoken back. Still, if I'd found that it actually WAS the REAL Jon Gosselin, I might have run screaming in the other direction.

Carlos Baute is a Poetic Liar

Early last year I watched a lot of Spanish tv. Over a period of about two weeks I saw the same blond Venezuelan actor/musician on a total of 3 television shows. I saw him on a morning show being interviewed. I saw him on Sabado Gigante. I saw him on Belleza Latina. And by the second time I saw him, I was in love. He was so cute and skinny and bright and knowing-looking. He kinda looked like a sunshiney bad boy. He had this toothy grin that blinged with white sparkle and he was always laughing.
So after enjoying the song he played on each show, I downloaded his whole cd. It became a fixture in my car's 6 cd changer. He sits in position number four, and has for an entire year. Right behind my three french rap cds, and before my Aventura cd.

All of his songs are love songs. Melodic and acoustic splashed 90's pop rhythm, the hooks on the songs have an amazing build and are a perfect compliment to a sunny day with your windows rolled down. Unlike American love songs, though, they're not about dirty sexy love. They're incredibly romantic. They talk about marriage and kids and the kinds of things every girl secretly wants to hear. I could have eaten Carlos Baute with a spoon! The whole idea that a guy was out there thinking those things made me giddy. Especially if the guy thinking them was as attractive as Carlos Baute.

One day, though, Daniel Castillo rained on my parade.

I was driving him to a soccer game and singing along to a song that sounded like this:

"Me quiero casar contigo.
Quiero dormir contigo.
Quiero que lleves mi apellido
Nuestros hijos, tu sonrisa.
Te quieres casar conmigo.
Quieres vivir conmigo.
Quiero pasar el resto de
mis dias con tu compania."
Which, of course, means:

I want to marry you.
I want to sleep with you.
I want to give you my last name
and give our children your smile.
Do you want to marry me?
Do you want to live with me?
I want to spend the rest
of my days with you.

"You like that song?" Daniel asked.
"YES!"
He paused for a second, pulling up his knee socks before saying, "I think maybe Carlos Baute is a liar with poetry."
I laughed. "A liar with poetry? Why! The whole cd follows a pattern, Daniel. Early tracks are about him falling in love with someone who is is best friend, and then they have an anniversary song, and he wants to marry her, and the last song is about always remembering those early good times together!"

Daniel's eyes grew wide, and I knew he was about to give me some major scoop. He had looked the same way when he was telling me about how Cristiano Ronaldo and Paris Hilton had sex in the back of a limousine. And how the pop artist Belinda (see pic below) had taken a fancy sports car in exchange for her virginity. Because, clearly, Daniel had been there. I rolled my eyes and braced for it.
"No no no... Carlos Baute, I see him interviewed on Don Francisco Presenta. And you know what he say?"
"What did he say?" I was already slumping. "I know he's not married. So whoever he's talking about, they didn't actually get married, but I thought..."
"Don Francisco ask him a question, like he ask everybody this same question. He say what is your favorite thing to do? What is your favorite time? And you know what Carlos Baute say???"
"What did he say..." Darn it, Daniel, I thought, you're gonna ruin it for me."
He say he like to take some girl and go some place, like tropical paradise place, and make a big vacation."
"Well... that's not so bad."
"Yes! Yes it is bad!" Daniel was not smiling at me. "You know why? It's because Carlos Baute say his favorite thing to do is make a big vacation and all he wanna do the whole time is mucho sexo and mucho comer. All he wants to do is have lots of sex and eat lots of food."
I laughed a little bit. "Really?"
"Yes. I saw him say this."
"Well, what about getting married and giving the girl his name and all that?"
"Nada. He wants sex and food."
"Ugh! ...he probably didn't mean it that way. He probably only does that with one woman. Not some woman."
"No, he says different women. All this things in his songs are big, big lies with poetry. He says anything for the girl to give him sex." I turned into the YMCA parking lot. "I'm sorry, Barbie."

So, Daniel was convinced Carlos Baute was a man-slut. And I was convinced he was beautiful. It is true that I often give people more credit than they are due. When I thought about it, though, Carlos Baute was really just the cover of a romance novel in my head. The stories he told in his songs were sweet and made me happy, and as I parked my car near the soccer field filled with Guatemalans and rich white people about to get their butts kicked, I decided I didn't care who Carlos Baute was in real life. As far as I was concerned, all his songs were about me.

To this day, I will listen to him with my windows rolled down, and my sun roof cracked open so the air blows through. I sip artificially sweetened coffee on ice, and sing along even when the people next to me at the red light stare. Daniel Castillo has come and gone, and left his dents, but Carlos Baute still loves me.

So I don't care if he's a poetic liar. Or if he beds a thousand Belinda's every night. When I play the cd, he loves me. He is what I want him to be. And that's all that really matters.

En Cambio

Sadly, despite my system flush, and attempt to rid myself of unnecessary stressers, I have added stressers that have little to do with my social life.

A week and a half ago I decided to plan a trip to Aalborg, Denmark, through Germany, and finally to Paris, France where I would attend a french rap concert featuring La Fouine. La Fouine, as you may know, is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE french rap artist in the world.

And I do love french rap, probably too much. I love it even when its inappropriate, because I wouldn't know. I love the way it sounds, all tough and delicate at the same time. I love that it's cheesy and fun. Its sense of humor is always a bright spot to my day.

I had been enjoying my time back at the only Temp job for the company I love and would die to work for.
I had been enjoying English Outreach classes on Sundays, classes I volunteered to teach, but hadn't yet.
I was looking forward to my presentation at work.

Then things got hairy.
My friend in Aalborg informed me that he cannot travel outside of the Sweeden-Norway-Denmark region because he is living in Denmark on asylum and recieves assistance from the government. Upon hearing this news, I angrily calculated that I had already spent around 400 dollars in preparation for the trip and the concert.
"You can still come to Aalborg!" he said. "We'll do some fun stuff here in Denmark! It is beautiful. You're gonna love it!"
But I was mad. I was really, really mad. To be honest, here he was thinking the trip was about spending time with him, when it was really about spending time with EUROPE. I wanted the trip for ME, not for him. I wanted to be romanced by the location, not the person I was visiting. I never officially cried, but when I got into my car after reading his email, and La Fouine came on my cd player, I might have shed a single tear.

My trip to Europe was put on hold indefinitely. I was extremely disappoined in myself, in my Danish friend, and in my helplessness to travel alone. I just didn't think I could do it. It had crossed my mind to attend the concert alone, but I was terrified of being stoned by angry Frenchmen.

Two nervewracking events soon occurred in quick succession.
I taught the Advanced class at English Outreach.
I gave my presentation at work and shocked everybody with my old Forensic skills.

A couple days later I was approached about a position that might be opening up at a high end bank. I jumped on it, scored the interview, and three days later, during the interview, was offered a job. The thing is, I don't really want to leave my current position at all. But I need a career, not just a place holder, and I need medical insurance.

Sigh...
I haven't had a good nights sleep in almost a week. I continually grind my teeth and dream about strange things like driving in the dark without any headlights, which seems oddly symbolic.

Slowly, and with much chagrin, I spitefully told the Danish dumbo that I would NOT be coming to Aalborg to stay with someone who hadn't even figured out his own legal status. I called France Billet in Paris using the $6 credit on my prepaid phone account to stay on hold for over two minutes and beg the CSR to help me in English sil vout plait! Canceling the tickets and retreiving my 110 dollars was a weight off my shoulders.

Still crushing me, however, was the job decision.

As of about one hour ago, I have officially chosen the bank.

Still. I am sad. The whole situation is a catch 22 of sadness. Sad if you don't go, sad if you do.

CHANGE, my friends, is the word of the day.

I can still remember my first few days of fourth grade. I hated it. I had no friends. I cried upon asking someone where my classroom was. I had to ride the bus for the first time. It was awful.

I can remember waking up and putting on the kitty cat sweater with little red button eyes, and sitting down with a bowl of Captain Crunch in front of the living room tv. I dreaded the bus like nobody's business. I HATED it. But Sesame Street was on. I remembered Sesame Street from when I was in Kindergarten and first grade. In fourth grade, everything was harder.
A song came on the episode of Sesame Street, and I have never forgotten it.

"Things are always changing. So don't be sad and blue. Change can make you happy; it can bring you something new."

I never forgot that song, and I sang it as a mantra, along with a couple poems I had memorized, just to calm myself down sometimes on the bus.

Things ARE always changing. How right you are, Sesame Street. How right you are...

The Only Option: at 180 Beats Per Minute

According to my wrist watch heart rate monitor, my pulse was racing at 180 beats per minute. I had been dancing for around thirty minutes already, my shirt tied up into a knot right above my stomach. The ceiling fan was on high, the dog was under the covers in bed, and mentally, I was a million miles away.

I was kicking the living daylight out of someone. I was grinding my heels into their eye sockets. I was punching the air wildly, knuckles into jawbone. I was swinging out my hips, moving faster and faster away. But then back, and with a terrific smack, and the crunch of bone, the nose would break.

"How DARE you lie to me!" I was swearing. "How dare you pretend!"

It wasn't anyone in particular. But the past was swirling swirling swirling. And I thought of my exes, and my church, and my old, backstabbing, nay-saying friends and I pushed harder and harder.

"DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHO I AM?"

Because, of course, they didn't. But did I, even? I pictured writing mean notes about infidelity to my former friend's husband. I imagined strategically ill-timed, revealing, embarassing posts on the public profiles of my exes. I imagined conveniently dropping full cups of hot coffee into their laps in passing. I imagined giving back the camera I'd recieved as a gift with a one finger salut as the only contained picture. I imagined sabotage, and the destruction of worlds.

"I'll show you! You just wait! I'll get you so good!" Punch, kick...

And then I thought about what the minister had said that past Sunday about a girl whose life changing, life determining experience had occurred in the 2nd grade, where her teacher had allowed all her classmates to write nasty things about her on the blackboard as punishment. And years later, after a failed marriage and lost jobs, her therapist had suggested that she revisit that day. Because Christ had been in the room, too. And after all the kids sat down, he had washed all the nasty words away. He had rewritten them. And hearing this, the girl was reborn. Even though she was 47 years old, and she was old and she was tired and bitter like soured rotten milk, she was reborn. She could let it all go, because he'd been there, and though she didn't know it, he'd never left.

My heartrate dropped to 156.
It just wouldn't be worth it. There are a thousand mean things I could put my effort into. And I'm conniving enough to carry out plenty of maliciously backhanded acts. In the seventh grade, I poured red food dye into Rebecca Blackwell's body lotion. Pointless, but amusing. These days I could probably get myself arrested without batting an eye. But where would I be then? It wouldn't make me any happier. My old speech coach used to say "Rise above, ladies. Rise above." Of course, there came a time years later, that I learned I had to "rise above" some of what even she said about me.

I pushed harder.

The only option, I thought, is to let it go. Its the only healthy option.
My heartrate was steady at 151, and I stared straight ahead, watching them all fade into the background, watching them slowly be erased, watching the pathway in front of me widen.

"Let me see the best version of myself."

And I kept on dancing.
And that was my Valentines Day.

Valentine's Day: Surprises and the Truth

I waited all day for the phone call from my mom that meant she had recieved the bouquet I'd ordered for her last month. When it came, I was informed that whatever company I had used shipped everything inside a big brown box and she had to assemble the arrangement herself. What a rip-off! I might as well have paid one of those immigrants hanging out at the Day Labor place to drag over a Kroger bouquet. Whatever. The box-o-flowers kinda softens the affect of flowers at work. Which, by the way, is the trump card of Valentine's Day.

Other than that mild disappointment, I am seriously beginning to sense a change in myself.

Yesterday I watched as this six foot tall blonde walked my pseudo-hipster Napoleon Dynamite crush down the center aisle at church before sitting together. They had to climb over people to sit side by side. I couldn't tell if she was chasing him, or if he was willing her to come along with him. Were they together? What was the deal? And I couldn't get it out of my mind. The whole church service I was checking to see if they were talking or exchanging looks. They weren't. And eventually, during a sermon about selfishness, of course, I managed to shake the obsession. Napoleon isn't even my usual type. He is 100 percent white American, and a little odd to boot. Why do I care what he does? If I fixate on him like this, its just going to make this whole experience about something that it has nothing to do with. Church is NOT a dating service.

"I kind of have international tendencies," I told Maryanne. We were at Panera Bread eating lunch after Sunday service. I had only met Maryanne a few times but we had already been to lunch in a group once before, so we got along okay.
"What do you mean tendencies?"
"I mean... I like foreign guys. I don't know why. I am just so much more attracted to them."
"Oooooh," Maryanne laughed. She had already finished her bagel. I was sitting there trying to eat the rest of my salad. "I'm weird like that too."
"Really?! With foreigners?"
"Oh-- no. I mean, I have a thing." Maryanne was twenty-six and pretty in a quiet way. She looked much older than she was, but had mannerisms and gestures that made her seem much younger than she was. She was sweet, and a little bit innocent.
"What's you're thing?"
"Well," Maryanne leaned in across the table, "I like black guys."
I almost spewed my soda.
"Well I do!" We both started laughing. "I mean, most of them are hot! So..."
Sometimes people surprise you. It's what makes life fun.

After church, I watched the blonde Amazon woman dart away from Napoleon, who is only a few inches taller than me, and I realized they were not together at all. They had been chatting casually and had ended up sitting next to each other. If either one of them wanted to continue talking, they would have stayed right where the were in the middle of the pew the minute the service closed. But amazon woman was out the door before I even had a chance to look for her. She didn't even say goodbye.

"I would have said goodbye." I mumbled to myself, on the way out to my car.

True. I could have said something to Napoleon as he waded his way out the door just like me. But he was already talking to someone else. Someone male, I noted. And I don't really know why I got on this thing where I notice him all the time. I don't even think I like him that much. Maybe its just somewhere to put my feelings. Maybe I park my feelings on Napoleon these days.

One thing I do know, though. I don't feel as much urgency in the dating department any more. I think maybe that's one thing I was doing wrong all this time. I felt this urgency. Like, He's right around the corner! I just need to meet him! So that literally every corner I turned I was looking for someone and calling fate on whoever I found. I don't know about that anymore. What I've figured out is this: You can't fit a square into a circle. No matter how close they are to perfect, you shouldn't settle.

In fact there is a guy at church who seems perfect. He did speech and debate, he goes to my church, he helps take care of his grandma, and works for himself! Well. What I really found out was that he was terrible at speech and debate, he only goes to church sometimes, he lives with his grandma, and he doesn't really work at all. He runs a website. Not a real job. And the living with grandma? Weird. He's 31 years old! Come on, now.

Anyway, I'm just not in a big hurry for someone to wow me with flowers and balloons. If the guy is wrong for you, all that cutesy stuff is just salt in the wound, right? All that's left is to figure out who's gonna be the wounded one.

I'll wait for it all now, okay?

I just hope I'm not too late.

Diamond Store Ninja Stars

If you dont live in Nashville, or if you do and are just completely unaware, LISTEN UP PEOPLE!

THERE'S A WAR GOING ON.

A jewelry war, to be exact.
Village Jewelers, Shane Company, and Genesis Diamonds are blowing up my car radio with sickeningly sweet commercials about true love, and crazy exotic accents promising uniquely international flavor at low, low diamond prices.

Seriously. What. The. Heck.
It is not HUMAN to sing along to a jewelry commercial. Two out of three regular radio listeners can probably recite for you the hours at your local Cool Springs Shane Company.

"Open Monday through Friday till 6. Saturday and Sunday till 5. Online... at ShaneCo dot com."

Oh yeah. It's gotten really bad. I even know the names of the owners at Village Jewelers and Genesis Diamonds. Owner Boaz Ramon, who reminds us that "his accent is always on value," competes regularly with Nyuma Shor of Village Jewelers, "official jeweler of the Tennessee Titans," who also has an alarmingly unique accent. The two of them are almost indistinguishable, though hilarious to immitate. The only odd ball is the nationally recognized voice of Tom Shane who should really invest in Brookstone and lend himself to Enviro-scapes because I immediately want to pass out upon hearing him speak.

What makes it worse, however, are the images they use to pull at your heart strings.

"He's charmed my mother, impressed my father..."

It's almost like they're waving phony, yet deliciously perfect relationships in your face.

"The next time I hold his hand, I want to be wearing a Tacori."

Which, by the way, is a very expensive designer engagement ring. ...Gold digger...

This stuff blares through my car stereo YEAR ROUND. Its Valentine's, true, but in the fall? Shane Company lets me know that more guys pop the question around Christmas than any other time! Its the summer? Bridal blitz! It DOES NOT end.

Thus, unfortunately, I am stuck here in my car year in, year out, glancing at my naked ring finger while I grumble about the sappy squooshy gooshy voice of the happy bride. OR, of course, the rolling R's of Boaz and Nyuma.

Speaking of whom, the plot thickens if you do a little research. The Charlotte (NC) Business Journal, dated April 30th, 2004 had the following to say about Mr. Ramon after his exit from the Charlotte diamond scene.

"No statement to the press was too outlandish and no competition-bashing advertisement was too bold for Boaz Ramon, the controversial former presient of Diamonds Direct USA Inc. The man who raised his diamond business from relative obscurity on Independence Boulevard to SouthPark -- the glittering heart of high-end retail in Charlotte -- won few friends along the way. But it wasn't just Ramon's aggressive business dealings that rankled the industry. The taunting calls he made to competitors when he took a customer away and the sef-congratulatory faxes he would send after winning a sale left many local jewelers angry and some feeling vulnerable. Many say they never knew what he would do next -- and that scared them. Ramon left management of the 6,000-square-foot SouthPark store and showroom on March 24 under circumstances that still aren't clear."

Love it! Taunting calls and self-congratulatory faxes? The man's a beast! His character gets more and more interesting the more you read. Apparently he's currently in the middle of a lawsuit.

"Cammeron's complaint detailed how he and Ramon signed a 13-month lease in June 2008 for a five-bedroom, 4,975-square-foot mansion on Taggart Avenue north of Cheekwood. Under the agreement, Ramon - who runs Genesis Diamonds in Green Hills - was to pay Cammeron $6,000 a month to live in the house built in 2007. In July of 2009, when he didn't notify Cammeron of his intent to leave after the 13 months, the lease was automatically renewed.
This past March, Cammeron says, Ramon moved out and has since not paid his rent. The builder also accuses Ramon of "causing substantial damages to the Property over and above normal wear and tear." He has asked for a trial to determine damages to the house, which until recently was being marketed for sale at $995,000."

Sucks for you, dude! I'll admit that an automatic lease renewal is a little sneaky. But the substantial damages to the house? Haha! At $6,000 a month, he's probably rolling in it from stealing would-be grooms' pocket change and having crazy parties or something. Personally, I enjoy the mental image.

So. Even though these commercials annoy the junk out of me, I can smile a little bit knowing that the sappy squooshy gooshy ads are, in reality, just backstabbing ninja stars being thrown by competitive jewelery store owners.

Its amusing, really, when you think about it.

Tabula Rasa

So I was thinking about it the other day and I think that no matter who you are... somebody probably assumes the worst about you. And its not because they think you're an idiot or because you stabbed them in the back at work.

In fact, I would say it's a Southern thing, but its not. Its a universal way that people identify each other. Its about culture and color and accents and comfort levels and how all of that dictates the way you think about everyone you meet in America.

First, History: The United States is possibly the only country that doesn't have its own cultural history beyond four or five generations. That means that the lines we draw between us and the groups that we form are quite different from those in other countries.

I postulate that part of the reason we are this way has to do with the fact that most of us came here under those exact circumstances. We "tired, poor, huddled masses" all shipped ourselves over and forced the only existing culture (native americans) into extinction. We formed huddled masses of our own. We segregated ourselves around what we knew. Pilgrims and Indians and Irish and German and Polish and Puerto Rican and Egyptian and Somalian and Kurdish. The passage of time allows for generational shifts and ethnic mixing, but we all have communities. Some communities are just older than others.

Personally, I've been noticing discrimination a lot more than I used to. Even my own discriminiations. Partially I think the reason I've never noticed it before has to do with the fact that I'm white. White Americans don't notice discrepancies in race relations as much as people from other backgrounds. Possibly, deep down, white people think they are SUPPOSED to be the majority because that's the way things have always been. And when a large group of "Other" comes in, they think somethings wrong. And things that are really more related to socioeconomics get labeled racial issues. Gangs, drugs, and public housing to name a few. These kinds of labels separate people. They form barriers that become sharpened and intensified by dialectical differences, differences of popular culture, and the perpetuation of unrealistic yet commonly accepted stereotypes.

"Recitatif" was Toni Morrison's only published short story, and it blew my mind in college.
The whole story is a series of five events in the lives of two women who are identified within the first paragraph as being of different races, black and white. The reader is the left, unbeknownst to him or her in most cases, to draw their own conclusions about who is black and who is white. While reading the story it is impossible not to picture the girls and intone your own opinion based on the events in the story.

Read it. It's amazing.
One student in my college class remarked that he thought one of the girls was black because the story mentioned that her hair smelled strange. Another remarked that it must have been a story about how a young black girl, obviously Roberta, they said, defied the odds and became wealthy and successful. Still another mentioned that Twyla must have been white because she couldn't remember what race a friend of theirs from school was. "White people don't notice people's color as much as black people," she had said.

Holy cow, Toni Morrison was a GENIUS for writing that story. The stereotypes in our heads were all going mad trying to tell us who was who and what was what, and none of it was even correct. She stripped right and wrong answers and let us see that the tools we use to identify people were often made of stereotypes.

People are a product of their experiences.

First generation Latin guys might call me a "bad girl" because they think white girls are "crazy." They see MTV, and they listen to pop music, and they see all the "freedom" and "equality" and they call us "bad" because we're just as capable of doing stereotypically male things as they are. And its all commonly accepted here. Sushiboy might have asked me for casual sex because I casually slid him my number underneath my plate at the sushi place while I was there with one of my guy friends. That guy in class might have said Roberta's hair meant she was black because one time he sat next to a fellow student on the bus who happened to be both black and overdoing it on the hair product.

Empiricism is the rule.

Its just not fair that we can't start with clean slates. Tabula rasa. I mean, I want to SO BADLY. And the older I get the more I realize that life is like a huge snowball of experiences. You keep going further and further down this big hill picking up all sorts of baggage and its like... Where does this end??? What's at the bottom of the hill? Why is it that when someone meets you they throw all their baggage on you and dress you up based on their experiences until you don't even look like yourself at all. You look like whatever they think you do.

Don't let your baggage determine who somebody else is. Everything you assume about anything and anyone is often a product of your mind alone. Though you may take credit for any truth you find, the link between your assumption and the truth is usually one big fat myth.

So anyway. What I'm trying to say is we should give each other more credit. Somebody I was talking to the other day said he travels to Latin America on a regular basis and he loves it there.
"It makes me feel like a Christian," he said. "And everything here is like... if you ask to stay with someone's family they're not sure. They're not hospitable. They get suspicious. And everything just..."
"--has to be a certain way," I finished.
"Yes!" he said.

Its true. Sure. People are the sum of their experiences. But don't let your experiences keep you from change. There is a big world out there. And you do NOT know everything.

Challenge yourself. Let go of your baggage and allow people to prove themselves beyond their own. Suspend your disbelief. Believe in something. Believe in the goodness of people and treat them well.

It will make you feel better.