In Which I Go Off - The Encore

Unbeknownst to me, I am full of rage these days.

I discovered that this morning when I found myself frothing at the mouth and quivering with anger in the Jones Coffee parking lot. I pointed to my watch to get my mom's attention and tell her that I couldn't stand to be there any longer. Fortunately for all parties involved, the gesture worked. I saw her smile and get up from the bench, looking awkward. We both walked over to the car in silence.

So what set my jowls a-quiver? (To borrow an excellent expression from my friend Robin.)

Between the weird family gathering and the World Cup viewing at Jones, chairs were at a real premium this morning. Mom and I crossed the parking lot to the two benches outside a design company to sit, and were just discussing the very grumpy Italian barista there when an older looking man approached us sheepishly with a latte in hand. He said something about there being no room, and could he join us on the empty bench next to ours. I said "of course."

I'm trying to summon my mental image of him and am mostly coming up with his khaki pants and sunglasses. Definitely no wedding ring, and some kind of offensively inoffensive button up short-sleeved blue shirt. Anyway. Dude was at least 65. His opening line was "so how is Pasadena these days?"

Jones is in Pasadena, and I cannot express how bizarre that sounded. My mom and I looked at each other, at a loss, until I said "well, the parking's as bad as ever." I asked him where he was from, and he said Long Beach, which is the port city of LA. My mom mentioned that a lot of Pasadena store fronts have been closing, and that our area has been hit really hard by the recession. It was at this point that our "friend" - I'll call him Dick - (it is our former vice president's name, after all) decided to blame our failing Californian economy on the plethora of "illegal aliens" lurking in our state. The aliens are wreaking havoc on our school system, in our hospitals, in our workplace, and on our streets.

I don't take kindly to the phrase "illegal aliens." I never have. I find it offensive, ludicrous, and hateful. It's the kind of verbiage assholes use to dehumanize others. It creates distance, erases faces and stories, and provokes fear. Aliens are taking over our government. They're not green and don't come from outer space : worse! They're brown and they're hopping fences! Protect your daughters! Talk about fear-mongering.

Well, that caught my attention. Dick followed this by saying he and many of his friends are thinking about retiring and moving to Costa Rica. I couldn't help myself. I smiled and said "Just like Rush Limbaugh!" My mom elbowed me, but I was having too much fun. He talked about how great Costa Rica's health care is compared to ours, and how great it is "down there." He talked about Panama, too, and it was about as much as I could handle not to explode. I heard an episode of This American Life around two months ago about a story of a little girl befriending Manuel Noriega and visiting Panama. I had no idea how heavy a hand the US had in the country's development, with the canal and the toppling of Noriega's regime. Perhaps for the best, I had no time to comment on that. Because Dick moved right along to Obama's new health care bill, and my interest was diverted to that.

Dick doesn't understand why our government supported such a massive overhaul of our health system. Doctors are in an uproar, Dick says. Why couldn't we fix the few problems that needed fixing? Why get big government involved? Quality of care is going to plummet. Here at last I come face to face with one of the frightened morons I read about daily while in France. (Reminder of my self-righteous fury.) Dick turned to my mom and said, "so you think you'll stick around?" What a charmer. My mom is a nice lady, and a polite one, and calm and collected, and not me. She humors people and doesn't wish to offend anyone. She laughed and said "Well, I've always fantasized about moving to Europe." Dick gave a courtesy chuckle. "But, actually, my daughter here just returned from two years in France a few weeks ago." Dick regarded me from behind his geriatric sunglasses. "Is that right? What did you think?"

"I love France. I think we have a lot to learn from from the French. I think they have great social programs." Okay, I admit that of all of the things I could've said, that was definitely the most hostile and immaturely provocative. But what could I do? Not put up a fight? Tell him the cheese is great? Let him believe that we're all conservative and support the shitty system we're only now looking at in the eyeball? I think Dick started realizing (and fast) that he was chatting to the wrong 25 year old. He pulled out something from the "news," regarding the collapse of Europe, and how after Greece and Spain, France is supposedly going down next. My mom reads the New York Times every day, as well as BBC News, and corrected him. Greece, Spain, Hungary, Portugal, and THEN France. I told him that France might be in financial trouble, but at least all of their citizens have health insurance and aren't dying because of bloated insurance-premiums and endlessly greedy insurance companies. I wanted to say that the U.S. has blazed the trail in a lot of things - including financial ruin and complete economic collapse.

Dick changed tactics at this point, and started talking about insurance companies and how drugs are so much cheaper abroad - because they don't have the bull shit class action suits we do. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? That might be true, but I also pointed out that they are HEAVILY SUBSIDIZED and that insurance companies might not be able to charge as much to begin with. They might be controlled by government. That earned a huffy silence, a brief mention of how we don't need yet another government branch to deal with the BP oil spill, and followed quickly by Dick saying that, don't get him wrong, he's enjoyed his trips to Paris and France might be a nice place. He told us some story about he and his ex-wife (...) going on a 3.5 month honeymoon in Europe and really enjoying their stint in Paris. And then another story about how he and his pal went to Pigalle (DOUBLE PLUS ...) and all of the taxi drivers there wouldn't take them to their hotel near Notre Dame, only to brothels. He flagged down a gendarme who made a cabbie take them back. And isn't that ridiculous. Can you imagine? My mom pointed out that could've happened in any country.

Those of you who know me have probably observed me fidget with paper cups. I can't help it. It's just something I do. Well, with the conclusion of the Pigalle story, the remains of my cappuccino cup were... remains. I excused myself on the premise of getting water and boiled inside while pretending to watch the World Cup game.

Turns out my watch-tapping a few minutes later got my mom out of a rather awkward situation. Dick asked for her phone number.

On the car ride home, I told my mom that I couldn't wait for her generation to fall out of power and my generation to assume those reins. And it's totally true. My friend Kate forwarded me this article about our generation's very new values and how drastically they differ from those of our parents. I don't think every person my age is open, loving, and wonderful. But from where I'm standing the "Babyboomers," are overwhelmingly cynical and greedy. Bernie Madoff? Haliburton? Factory farming? Fred Phelps? I know those seem like very disparate issues, and they are, but they just seem so tied into this crazy culture of fear I see in the 60 somethings. Frankly, I'm looking forward to the great homophobes and racists dying out. I'm sure they're not exclusive to our parents' age group, but at least we've grown up learning how to tolerate, accept, and embrace. I hope.

So, Dick, while I can't say you "got schooled," I can say that if you thought I was going to docilely ingest your conservative bile, you were wrong. And if you thought you were going to approach a blue-eyed babe and get her phone number today, you were wrong on that account too. I hear tickets to Costa Rica are pretty cheap right now.

BON VOYAGE.