“Glinny! How’s my baby dotta?! How did your photo shoot go today? Who’s this?”
“Hey momma, this here is Will. He drove me to the shoot today. Will, this is my Momma. You can call her Mrs. Fender.”
“Well hi there Will, welcome to our home. Thank you for taking my little girl to her photo shoot.”
“Hello, Mrs. Fender. Thank you for letting me into your home.”
“Quite all right, Will. You can use the washroom on the left down the hall, if you’d like to wash up a bit.”
“OK, perhaps I should. Thank you.”
“Glinny, he looks like he went to the moon and came back all dusty.”
“Momma, he can still hear you.”
++++++++++++++++++++++
Yup. I was about to meet the rest of Glinda’s family.
I looked in their hallway restroom mirror and saw that my eyes were still red. We’d stopped at a desert gas station so I could rinse out my eyes in the restroom there, and wash the dust from my face.
I would have used bottled water, of course, but that hadn’t been invented yet. Well, except for Perrier, but that was in a green glass bottle, and it was bubbly.
Can you imagine paying money for something that comes out of a tap for free?
That would be crazy, huh?
The fraught face that stared back from the mirror had a ring of mud around it. Like a kid who is dark and dirty, but tries to make himself clean. His hair was dusty, and his mouth trembled. What the fuck had happened in the desert?
Now I had to go meet the parents of a girl I was realizing at that moment… well… she considered me to be her boyfriend.
Parents.
Crazy clown devils.
Black hearses,
And dust.
The dust of centuries, of erased memories, of ghosts from the forgotten Wild West.
It was chust so sad.
I washed up and although my clothes were still quite dusty, (even though I’d shaken off outside the gas station like a dog), I thought I looked presentable.
I would turn out to be wrong.
Check it out.
----------------------------------
“Will, come meet my daddy. Hey Poppa!”
“Well hey there Sunshine! Who’s this dusty white boy you done brought here into my house? “
“Poppa, this is Will. Will, this here is Mr. Fender.”
“Will, huh? Did you make out your will? Don’t go sitting on the furniture before I take you out back and hose you down!”
“Uh, hi sir. Actually, I’m half Indian.”
“Oh, that right? Mujhadeen?”
“Uh, no sir. Eastern woodland tribe. River people.”
“You should have gone to the river before you came here boy! Gone looking for a bar of soap along the bottom, amongst the rocks. Hehehe. Come on out back where all the food is.”
“Thank you Mr. Fender.”
“Sunshine, he look like he been to the ---“
“Shhh, Poppa, he had the willies earlier.”
--------------------------------
The huge crowd of Glinda’s family all stopped and looked at me when I came through the rear sliding glass door. I swear, the music stopped, the laughter stopped, someone dropped a spoon that clinkered around on the cement patio, and the crickets started chirping.
I gulped and smiled, and Glinda took me by the elbow to the buffet table.
A mile of potato salads of various competitions were strewn along beside Dutch ovens of slow roasted beef chuck, pork loins, and pans of barbequed ribs, as well as cob corn already buttered and salted up, crisp garden salads, sautéed garlic spinach with parmesan cheese freshly shredded, and home made mac and cheese with buttery crumbled Ritz crackers on top were the ones that called out to me from the ninety-nine others.
My tongue had an instant boner.
“Psst. Who brought the fuzz? Look like undercover narc or someshit.”
“Don’t let him near Aunt Matilda’s collard greens, they illegal!”
“Boy look like he been dug out a desert grave. Mind your brains!”
“Aww, he kinda cute, for a white boy. Be nice.”
“Hey! White Boy! You bring some mayo and baloney sandwiches witcha?”
“SHHH! Don’t be scaring him. He look white as a ghost already!”
“AH HAHAHAHA!”
--------------------------------
I suddenly lost my appetite. But I didn’t have the sense to leave just then. No, it would go on, until finally I did get a clue.
This is not an indictment against any tribe whatsoever.
I am from a tribe. I am half white, although I can’t prove it.
---------------------------------
I felt my rage rumble in my belly.
That’s where it begins every time, my friend.
I placed a tiny bit of each dish onto my plate as I trudged along, walking the gauntlet, like a doomed man on death row. It really is the best way to eat at a family buffet. Folks will notice if you do not at least try a tiny taste of their food that they have put their best effort into making for others to eat.
At the end of the table, my dish was piled quite high.
“Lookit that boy. Don’t his momma feed him at all?”
“Homeboy looking to feed the whole graveyard when he get back home!”
“Michael, go help that boy carry his plate before he break his arm…”
“Hey, did he take TWO ribs? I mo beat his wasteful ass!”
“Chuckie, don’t be mean. He need one them ribs for the walk home. Heheheee”
I resisted the urge to chuck my dish at Chuckie, if I could locate him. When you have anger, sometimes you do not think clearly.
But,
This time, I learned how to quell my anger. This is not “pussying out.” This is proper use of common sense.
This is when and how I learned how to hold off and take it, and choose my battle.
You can call it what you want, but it might just save you a world of trouble.
Or not.
Eventually, you will meet your anger, and find that you have rage. Hopefully, you will not find out that you have blind rage.
If you do, please be sure to clean up after yourself.
It is bad manners to leave a mess behind.
Indeed.
That would be very bad. Ya think?
God Help You.
God Help Us All.
---willies out.
.
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