Mean and Ignorant
I was at Central Pizza this afternoon to pick up a cheesesteak.
The woman who runs the counter is in her late forties, maybe early fifties, with scrappy brown hair and yellowed teeth. Her skin has that sepia tone that long-term smokers always seem to have. Her legs are rather thin, considering they prop up a body that resembles a fire hydrant. She’s always friendly to me. They make the best cheesesteak in the immediate area, and she always knows what Iwant. “Cheesteak wid frie dunyuns hun?” she laughs whenever I walk in the door. “Another cheesteak an’ you’re gonna turn inna one! HAHAHAHA!” she cackles as the slab of beef hits the grill.
The weather was cold and drizzly, and so instead of my usual visit to DiPinto Guitars a block down the street, I waited at the counter for my steak, thumbing through a copy of the Philly Weekly.
“Ya see the news last night?” the woman said, making small talk. “I mean, good grief, I am upta here with these Katrina people. Dey keep cryin’ and complainin’, My rent subsidy’s run out, I can’t find a job, crying about their “post-traumatic stress disorder” or whatever.” I could almost see the finger quotes. “It was their choice, they coulda left.”
My stomach plummeted. I wanted to ask the woman, “I don’t know. How about I burn down your house with everything in it, kill off half of your support network,move you to a state where you don’t know anyone, and tell you you can’t go back home. Would a year be enough to get back on your feet?” I couldn’t even look at her, and instead focused on the cross dangling around her neck. Christian charity, indeed.
“I mean get on wid it already,” she continued. “I’m so tarda hearin’ ’bout how bad dey got it…” She handed me my cheesesteak with a friendly smile. “Have a good’n hun, see ya again!”
I walked back to work with my head hanging, feeling so sad and disappointed by what this woman had said so casually, as if it was perfectly reasonable to expect people whose lives have been destroyed, utterly destroyed, to just pick up the pieces in a year, when not even the federal government can get the job done.
And that was when I realized that, at the heart, most people are shitty, mean, stupid, and ignorant.
5 Responses to “Mean and Ignorant”
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August 30th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Hi Brendan;
That’s a crappy story; I wish my neighbors had some compassion. My life is tough, your life is tough, I’m sure that lady’s life is tough, but geez, at least we didn’t have our city and lives destroyed virtually overnight.
I wonder if ‘dem people’ weren’t black, if her feeling would be different…
August 30th, 2006 at 9:28 pm
PS…do you have any thoughts about getting together with all the boys? Are you guys doing anything for labor day yet?
August 30th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
It’s always depressing when I realize that someone I see regularly, even I don’t know them, is a total ass. I don’t think it’s a good idea to judge ‘most people’ by her, though. It’s not that people are just stupid and mean, it’s that we’re not [generally speaking] trained to actually give things any kind of thorough and honest thought.
I’m surprised you were able to keep your mouth shut - maybe it wouldn’t have changed her attitude, but it might have made you feel better.
August 30th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
sad sad sad…i would have been so tempted to say something about her lack of ‘christian’ charity. i don’t know if i would have the balls to do it but i would have regretted not saying anything afterward. and i definitly would never go back for her now tainted with unhappiness sandwiches.
i am also sick of looking at footage of katrina. probably because it makes all of us sick to think what happened/is happening. but i am completely NOT sick of realizing that what i have is a blessing from the universe 1000x fold in comparison to those who died and were displaced.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
I (again) watched the last half of the four-hour Spike Lee doc on Katrina called When The Levees Broke. It’s really difficult to watch at points, but really, really important to see. (Since it has only been shown on HBO a couple of times I haven’t been able to check it out in its entirety) Spike is definitely a polarizing guy, but in this he takes a considerably balanced approach, and basically lets anybody who is willing to talk to him speak their minds. I’m still trying to process the mixture of sadness and anger and inspiration that I got from seeing it. I’ve felt a little off and empty all day, like a hangover of the spirit. But that might have just been the fact that the last thing I saw before I went to bed, right after watching the Spike doc, was Brian Williams’ interview on the streets of New Orleans with that arrogant, dangerous, defiantly ignorant shithead George W. Bush.