Strangers in a Strange Land

As tourist season is now fully upon us here in Washington, DC, I figured I would post something that I wrote a few years ago when I thought I was stuck here and never going to travel again. I have since traveled. But, alas, so have they. 

Strangers in a Strange Land

When it all finally came to an end, over a year ago, and I returned from almost two years of traveling the globe for my job, I had a crisis. I normally had some sort of crisis in between my travels and, especially after trips to particularly exotic locales or extended periods away, I always panicked about returning home. Until that point, my panic was, in part, assuaged by the knowledge that I would soon be leaving again. This time, however, I did not have guarantees, no promises that I would be off on a new adventure soon. That fact, in and of itself, made me neurotic.

As I was grappling with the fact that I was no longer a “foreigner” but once again a “native,” I began to view, with increasing annoyance, those that I consider “strangers in my own land,” specifically: tourists.

I will freely admit that I have no patience, none whatsoever. I think I come by it honestly enough, for watching my mother in action confirms that this gene was certainly missing from at least her side of the DNA pond and my memories of my father are similar.

Case in point:

We’re in Publix, a supermarket chain that predominates the South, and we are in the checkout line. The cashier, clearly afflicted with some organic disorder that has greatly reduced the time-action function of the brain, is slowly turning over the packaged deli ham, trying to find the barcode for scanning the item. Yes, it is obvious that, with such an item, there is only one place it could be and, yes, this has been going on for about ten minutes but, really, what can you do?

So there is this poor woman smiling happily while contemplating the location of a barcode on an essentially two dimensional item without a lot of hiding places but she is happy…she doesn’t know that there are about fifty customers in line waiting for her to find the solution. Nor does she realize who is at the front of the line…the potential new owner of the ham product…my mother.

She is fuming. “It is right there…right there!!” she hisses to me, “What is wrong with this picture??? Is she retarded or something??”

Well, um, yes, mom, she is indeed retarded.

 I try to convey this subtly, while the cashier has begun opening the package to see if maybe, just maybe, the solution might be found on an individual piece of ham…

“Well she shouldn’t be working the goddamn checkout line in the middle of Christmas season,” my mother announces. At the same time, she grabs the ham, slowly being dissembled to her horror on the conveyor belt, and scans the thing herself and unceremoniously plops it in the shopping bag. No one, neither my mother nor the cashier, looks particularly upset. I, however, am mortified.

Don’t get me wrong, my mother is not an unkind person nor is she opposed to having the disabled get a fair shot at the job market. She is actually quite the opposite under most circumstances. What my mother suffers from, and what eventually puts her over the edge, is that she has no patience.

If it comes between getting that ham in the bag or waiting patiently while the woman with Downs syndrome tries to figure out where the barcode is lurking, my mother is going to do it herself. She has no patience, or political correctness, on these occasions.

I am the same with tourists.

Having grown up either in or within close proximity to major East Coast metropolitan centers my entire life, I have admittedly become the very embodiment of all that people that are not from these areas absolutely loathe. Still, when coming back from one of my months-long foreign trips, especially when I knew it was the last one, I clung to the familiar…the “known.” I fell back on old habits and got particularly irritated when I was forced to confront the fact that there are other Americans who do not live this way or, even worse, are more foreign to me than many of the people I met on my travels. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I can understand them, even with their odd accents, but I think that makes it worse, not better. Then I am forced to pay attention.

I must say, all of the stereotypes about my people, us “East Coast Metropolitan dwellers” are true: we are always in a hurry, sometimes rude, never randomly chatty unless we know we’re dealing with one of “our own,” and intensely cliquish. Tell me you’re from Boston, New York, Philadelphia or even Trenton and I am willing to open lines of communication; tell me you’re from Fargo and all bets are off. I am not proud of this fact and I freely admit that it may have become more intense over the past two years of travel but, for all practical purposes, it is true.

Unfortunately, over the past five years, my East Coast base has been Washington, DC, our nation’s fine capital. And, unlike Boston, New York or Philadelphia, it is not large enough to escape from the yearly onslaught of tourists venturing out to see where the decisions that fuel their diesel engines are made or those pretty trees that them there Japanese folks gave us when they spring into their full glory in April. Although I do find the cherry blossoms lovely as well, secretly I am a little ticked off at the Japanese for giving us those damn trees because, for me, it signals only one thing: The Beginning of Tourist Season.

Because DC is a small, compact city and not particularly amenable to drive in (while roundabouts may seem perfectly comprehensible to the Europeans, they scare the shit out of Americans and have no place in our country) if you want to get anywhere fast and with the least amount of mental anguish, one must use the public transportation system. This is where the trouble starts.

I have experienced, in just about every corner of the globe, the rules of using a particular city’s public transportation and I can assure you, there are RULES. In DC these rules are strictly adhered to and, if not heeded, are likely to be the cause of some fairly brutal behavior if not an outright death sentence.

For starters, when getting onto the Metro system, you immediately rush the doors but then patiently move to either side to allow exiting passengers off of the car. Once you are fairly certain that the majority have cleared out, you immediately forge ahead, pushing and elbowing to get the one or two vacated seats. If there are none, you move to the center of the car and glare menacingly at people occupying two seats because of luggage or too many packages and wait, all muscles tense, to spring into the first available seat.

I personally play the “watch the body language” game and try to intuit who might be getting off at the next stop by watching to see if they are gathering packages or subtly shifting in a manner which indicates their imminent departure. Mind you, this does not always work and I have, on a few occasions, jumped into unsuspecting laps or crushed holiday presents but, nevertheless, I persist.

If, however, you are forced to stand, as is normally the case when jammed into the morning rush hour trains, you bear it with dignity and grace, making minimal eye contact with those around you and refraining from screeching when the train comes to an unexpected lurching halt that results in your foot being squashed by someone’s high heel or hot Starbucks coffee being splashed in your face.  There is little to no talking and, except exchanging the occasional “this sucks but what can we do about it?” glance with someone, you keep your eyes on your paper, your book, or the floor. No one is particularly fucking happy about being jammed into a metal box at 8am and being mercilessly tossed about while every other message announced over the PA system tells you that the seemingly innocent forgotten parcel on the seat next to you might well contain an explosive device planted by a terrorist.

“Please take account of all of your belongings and if you notice an unattended item, do not touch it or attempt to move it, report it to your friendly Metro rail employee immediately. Thank you and have a wonderful ride!”

Let’s see…is that my greasy abandoned McDonalds sack on the seat in front of me?

No, I think not.

OK… it’s not, then what are the chances it contains a terrorist’s bio-chemical weapon of mass destruction or some C-4 explosive?

Pretty good, they tell me.

Now…if I could only dislodge myself from this sea of humanity long enough to find a friendly Metro rail employee…

It truly never ceases to confound me.

Regular riders and city natives take none of these things too seriously.

Sure, we’re vigilant, but if the abandoned newspaper menacingly rolled around an empty Doritos bag is going to blow…fuck it, we’re going to die. We accept that. It is one of life’s great risks. We are stoic about these things. Not the tourists, however, never the tourists.

The tourists take these directions seriously, especially those from the Midwest. They’ll be goddamned if their vacation is going to be interrupted by some crazy A-rab bombing the subway.

“Is that your bag?”

Yes, it has my laptop in it, it’s on my lap, it’s mine.

“Are you sure?” “It looks suspicious…”

Most Americans are friendly, even us city dwellers, and tolerate these inquiries as parents would a child.

“That is the stove, junior, if the circles on top are red, don’t touch it.”

It’s the fact that they have to talk to everyone that kills me. Why do they have to talk to everyone??

I am sitting on the Metro a few hours after rush hour busily reading my notes for a meeting when it happens: a tourist meets a local.

Unfortunately, as circumstances would have it, the local is blind and the tourist, well, is equally so.

She’s perky, blond, and possesses one of those accents that scream CORNFIELD while he, dressed conservatively in a grey suit and sunglasses, possesses a white cane and orange-vested dog emblazoned with the logo: Seeing Eyes for the Blind.

For the first few moments I am hopeful that she will be quiet although all my senses are on full alert. She is surveying the scene with the wide-eyed wonder of a child when her gaze falls upon the blind dude with the dog. Then, of course, it happens.

“Is that your dog?” she inquires.

Immediately, I want to scream. The dialogue starts up in my head.

Is that your fucking dog??? Not only am I blind but now I have some goddamn dressed-up dog following me around??

“Um, yes, she is my dog,” he replies, the picture of patience.

She absorbs this. I silently implore her to shut up. But no…

“She sure is pretty, isn’t she?” she responds.

CHRIST!!!!

“That’s what they tell me,” he chuckles good-naturedly.

“No, I mean her coat is all shiny, she looks real healthy, don’t you think?”

Oh please, please shut up. Please shut up, please…

He tilts his head toward the ceiling and nods, then reaches out to stroke the air where the dog’s head is supposed to be. Still, no clue.

She, however, has found her groove.

“I have a dog too, you know” she tells him.

Meanwhile, convinced that this can only get much, much worse, I have begun staring at her intensely trying to make eye contact. It’s the one thing we have going for us that he, most certainly, does not.

“Is that so?” he replies.

I begin miming, hoping she’ll notice me. I am making slashing gestures in the air around my eyes hoping to convey to her that she is talking to a blind man. She takes no notice.

At that moment he chooses to lift his shades and turn in her direction. Then I see it….I am momentarily horrified.

Not only is he blind….he has no fucking eyeballs. None. Just closed lids and empty sockets where eyeballs (maybe?) once used to be. Either way, they are not there now.

I sit back in relief…now that she has seen he has no eyeballs, this ridiculous conversation will end.

“Yup, I have a dog too…her name’s Sally,” she continues.

NOOOOOOOO!!!!!

I start miming in her direction frantically again, trying to point out that the man, the nice man on the subway with the nice dog, HAS NO FUCKING EYEBALLS.

Then I realize that I am hopping around like a goddamn spastic and people are probably wondering if I am either foreign, blind, or retarded, so I will myself to stop.

“She loves to go for runs…Sally does,” she conveys.

Mr. No Eyeballs is nodding at the ceiling again.

“Hey, I bet your girl would like to go for a run too!! Don’t ya think?”

“I sure as hell hope not, walking is about the only speed I can go at these days,” he replies.

Luckily, I am saved. Saved by my stop.

I burst free and try to shake it off. Upon hitting the office I immediately relate the tale to my colleagues.

The office manager, Mike, tries to reason with me.

“Patti, why do you get yourself in such a huff over this shit? They (he is also from the East Coast and uses “they” as liberally as I do to describe our fellow countrymen) can’t help it.”

No eyeballs!!! I protest. NO EYEBALLS!!!

He sighs and pats me on the head in a fashion that conveys: “You have a lot to learn young samurai, a lot to learn.”

I retreat to my office, scolded. Later that night, I call my mother to convey the story.

“Yeah, I know about the Midwesterners,” she sympathizes. “But they are very honest people and I like doing business with them.”

No eyeballs, Mah, NO EYEBALLS!!!!

“I have ones that come to buy property in south Florida and want to know where the basement is. When I tell them it’s too hot to have a basement or more than one floor, they generally accept that fact although they look confused.”

I am intrigued. Why? Why are they confused?

“Because then they want to know, if there is no basement, where the furnace is located.”

I feel better. Who needs to go abroad when there are so many strangers in our own land?