Saturday, October 08, 2005
Say what?
I just finished watching Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle. Funny and mindless entertainment loosely based on the issue of racial diversity in America. It’s not exactly an intellectual movie (Not in any sense that I can imagine at least), but it got me thinking about something that happened to me along that line a while back.
This was even before my internship, when I tagged along with my dad on a business trip to America. It was a small town in Oregon and we were only there for a few days. No point renting a car for that short period, so we walked around one evening hunting for food.
It wasn’t particularly cold, but the chilly breeze blowing by was just enough to make me tuck my hands into my jacket pockets. It was rather late, probably 7-8 pm but the sky was still bright. The street, however, was rather deserted, with only occasional pedestrians and vehicles. Most of the stores were closed at that time in a small industrial town. Random litter flitted in the wind, while a homeless guy pushed a trolley with all his worldly possessions across a traffic interchange, the wheels rattling against the asphalt being the loudest audible noise on the street.
We were both quite hungry and absorbed in trying to recall where we saw the eating places along the way back to our hotel earlier on. As we crossed a traffic light, a graying, bearded man in a greasy jacket and baseball cap walked in the opposite direction. I hardly noticed him, but as he passed he muttered just loudly enough for us to hear, something that sounded like,
“Wide America.”
My father is quite hard of hearing so he didn’t even notice it. I wasn’t entirely sure he was talking to us, but he WAS looking towards our direction and there wasn’t anyone else except the two of us. As a result, we both didn’t pay much heed to that weird comment.
As we continued pounding the pavement, the sheer oddity of that remark stuck in my head. My dad kept muttering about finding this Chinese eatery that we passed just now, but I continued to ponder. What on earth did it mean? A cursory glance at a map would confirm that America is indeed wider than it is long, but why would someone feel such an urge to give two passing strangers an impromptu geography lesson?
Could it have been :
“Why America?”
“Wry America?”
“Ride America?”
“Right America?”
I tried all the possible rhymes, temporarily diverting my attention from my stomach to my linguistic memory banks, and it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out what it actually was.
And when I did, I chuckled to myself and brushed it off as the silly bigoted jibe* that it was and decided to concentrate on something more worthwhile.
Like finding food. Just as Harold and Kumar did.
*Can't figure it out? Hint: Read out the first sentence of this post.
This was even before my internship, when I tagged along with my dad on a business trip to America. It was a small town in Oregon and we were only there for a few days. No point renting a car for that short period, so we walked around one evening hunting for food.
It wasn’t particularly cold, but the chilly breeze blowing by was just enough to make me tuck my hands into my jacket pockets. It was rather late, probably 7-8 pm but the sky was still bright. The street, however, was rather deserted, with only occasional pedestrians and vehicles. Most of the stores were closed at that time in a small industrial town. Random litter flitted in the wind, while a homeless guy pushed a trolley with all his worldly possessions across a traffic interchange, the wheels rattling against the asphalt being the loudest audible noise on the street.
We were both quite hungry and absorbed in trying to recall where we saw the eating places along the way back to our hotel earlier on. As we crossed a traffic light, a graying, bearded man in a greasy jacket and baseball cap walked in the opposite direction. I hardly noticed him, but as he passed he muttered just loudly enough for us to hear, something that sounded like,
“Wide America.”
My father is quite hard of hearing so he didn’t even notice it. I wasn’t entirely sure he was talking to us, but he WAS looking towards our direction and there wasn’t anyone else except the two of us. As a result, we both didn’t pay much heed to that weird comment.
As we continued pounding the pavement, the sheer oddity of that remark stuck in my head. My dad kept muttering about finding this Chinese eatery that we passed just now, but I continued to ponder. What on earth did it mean? A cursory glance at a map would confirm that America is indeed wider than it is long, but why would someone feel such an urge to give two passing strangers an impromptu geography lesson?
Could it have been :
“Why America?”
“Wry America?”
“Ride America?”
“Right America?”
I tried all the possible rhymes, temporarily diverting my attention from my stomach to my linguistic memory banks, and it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out what it actually was.
And when I did, I chuckled to myself and brushed it off as the silly bigoted jibe* that it was and decided to concentrate on something more worthwhile.
Like finding food. Just as Harold and Kumar did.
*Can't figure it out? Hint: Read out the first sentence of this post.
# posted by BloozeGit @ 2:38 am 
