This voice keeps whispering in my other ear

by anna at 10:41 AM on May 22, 2006

Yes, I am aware of the hot debate over immigration. I know the House has passed a Draconian bill and the Senate is considering another. I know W emerged from hiding to deliver a speech about it, delaying 24 by 19 minutes.

I also know there are a lot of Hispanics in this country. I think all 25 million of them live in my town. Everywhere are utilitarian bicycles and packs of pedestrians choking the sidewalks. Mariachi music booms from low-rider cars. Day laborers hoot and holler at my wife and stepdaughters. Corona is sold by the case. You can't get a cup of coffee at 7-11 due to the morning mobs chattering in Spanish. People act surprised that I don't speak even rudimentary Spanish beyond si and gracious and senor.

It used to bother me immensely. But no more. Due to a confluence of good fortune in my life including some intimate moments, exemplary soccer play, a raise, a tex refund and a successful expense reduction campaign (from $5000 a month to $4200,) I have a new outlook. The financial windfall alone has allowed me to pass my battered 97 Geo Metro along to my son. Well it would if the tax check ever arrives. It was mailed 4/28/06 but the IRS won't even accept a call about it until 5/26/06. It would also help if Ian knew how to drive.

But really I am feeling good these days. Right now I am on va-K again, just chilling around the house. I have grown a lawn where there was only dirt before. I am shooting birds that try to eat my grass seed.

So there I am at the grocery store. I am hefting cantalopes. A young chiquita says something to me in Spanish. I don't understand a word of it. But she's holding up a bag of whithered been sprouts and pointing at a sign that says "reduced! $1. Unlike most signs there is no Spanish subtext. I gather that she wants me to tell her whether the sign corresponds with the sprouts. I go, "si, senorita." And she smiles at me, joyfully clutching the sprouts to her chest as if a newborn Brangelina baby. I have made her day.

I go to ring up my purchases and much to my chagrin it's a choice between a mile long line of chattering Hispanics and the dreaded self checkout with its robotic voice guiding the neophyte through the process. I am that neophyte. I've always avoided dealing with it. So I am muddling through it when the sprout-loving senorita appears to save the day. She shows me how to do it.

Now I am feeling like a freak and I am loving it. I am an anachronism, an English-speaking, middle-aged white man in a polyglot society I know nothing about. Life is good as a minority.

Gracias, senorita.