White folks reading this, get ready to put a paper bag over your head after you absorb this and be glad that your folks raised you right.
I often complain about the ordeal of growing up black in the affluent wasteland and bastion of casual racism that is Westport, Connecticut, but my mom has been stuck there on a daily basis for thirty-two years and has had to deal with far more fucked up bullshit than I ever did so maybe I should just shut the fuck up; Mildred's a seventy-one-year-old brainiac who went to college at fifteen, earned several degrees in teaching,counseling and hypnotherapy, yet when I was a kid the parents of several of my schoolmates asked me if she was available to "do their houses," in other words be a maid.
Let’s face it: although many people who grew up alongside me from 1972 through 1983 were active bigots and morons — same difference, I guess — most of them grew up, left Wasteport and gained a bit of life experience outside of an East Coast “90210”-made-real (translation: they had their asses kicked, either physically or verbally, by a variety of non-white ethnics) and kicked that tired bullshit to the curb. Sadly, a large portion of my hometown’s residents who are my mother’s peers will never find enlightenment of any sort and continue to perpetrate outdated and unacceptable behavior based on ignorant assumptions and generalizations about us highly-rhythmic individuals that will probably be standard practice until they have the basic decency of falling over stone-cold dead.
An all-too-common example of this charming phenomenon would be the time mumsy went shopping at the local Barnes & Noble book store and a “helpful” saleslady spotted her. This junior Stepford Wife saw her browsing, tapped her on the shoulder and cheerfully noted that “The books from Oprah’s book club are over that way.” As she gets closer to taking the dirt-nap herself, my mother’s legendary Chernobyl-style meltdowns directed at other people have been put to the wayside since she’s fought this losing battle her entire life and simply just does not give a fuck anymore; consequently, the saleswoman lived to see another useless day.
Similar incidents have occurred at every conceivable type of store or public venue since the second our family landed in Fairfield County, and they just don’t end. Case in point, this past Election Night.
Mom went to the polling booth, did the Kerry Futility Dance, and walked out. One of the local blueblood cunts walked up to her, placed a “socially conscious” hand upon her shoulder and said “Now wasn’t that a nice experience, honey?” My mom is definitely in her Autumn years because just a decade ago such treatment would have earned a public display of invective that would have made the possessed Regan McNeal appear from out of nowhere and wash her mouth out with a whole bar of Irish Spring; rather than give the old crow a lecture about how she was most definitely NOT a domestic, mum went into a lengthy and utterly sarcastic rumination upon the merits — or lack thereof — of the assorted candidates, a move that apparently gave the coffin-dodging twat a mild shock, presumably driving her home to the dusky attentions of her houseboy, Rakeem Al-Mandingo X. Me, I would have gone for the old Amos ‘n’ Andy “Now lookee here! I’s votin’ fo’ de nex’ Prez’dint uv de Yoo-nited Stakes, an’ I ain’t payin’ no taxums or no stipends!”, but I guess her way was more effective when used upon someone of her own age.
Fuck, I hate that town.
No comments:
Post a Comment