I'm waiting in my bedroom. There's a man from Armenia in my kitchen, crouched down by my dishwasher. He's waiting for the Quick cycle to complete so that he can determine why it's not draining. I only mention that he's Armenian because he looked at me strangely when I asked whether he was checking out the Dodgers schedule, a large magnet attached to the refrigerator door and at his eye level. In my country, we don't watch baseball, he said, I love soccer. I asked him what country although I had already guessed by his accent, but unlike The Donald, I veer toward the politically correct and didn't want to profile him in any way. Capische? my father would say. That's you, I'm asking, not the dishwasher repairman. I'm fascinated these days by the collision of language and culture, a collision that seems inevitable for all but those who've taken vows of silence. It seems like there's always someone or something to offend, whether you're being completely rude and calling someone a fucker, let's say, or mincing your words while wearing the yoke of politically correct intentions. There's rape culture and microaggression and ableism and racism and sexism and what means yes and what means no, good intentions and bad ones, consciousness and unconsciousness and subconsciousness. And then there's the law and the interpretation of the law and the protection of the law and the rebuffing of the law. It's a weird sort of tyranny, I think, but I haven't thought deeply enough about it to make sense here. Did you participate in the Armenian 100 year celebration? I asked him, looking for something to share. Oliver and I had walked to the end of our street during the parade and watched the tens of thousands of Armenians walking toward the Turkish embassy. The dishwasher repairman said, Yes, but my grandfather had waited all of his life for it and was waiting to go back and visit his home that he'd fled. He died right before. I told him that I was sorry to hear that, to hear that his wait had been for nought, and the dishwasher repairman shook his head and replied that at least they could acknowledge this waiting, this crime. Then we both looked at the dishwasher, like it was waiting for us. I came back here, to my bedroom, to wait. Capische?
I really enjoyed this, what could've been a boring afternoon became much more. Thanks for posting this!
ReplyDeleteI resonate to these thoughts, Elizabeth. It's hard to feel okay exploring diversity when there's so much political correctness and so many 'isms' around.
ReplyDeleteI think it is lovely that you noticed him *and* his culture. It isn't a post about profiling but about honoring his culture and all that he is and all that he has lost. In all our political correctness we lose sight of what is important. I hope this makes sense. I am in a different time zone and have been traveling all day.
ReplyDeleteYes I do.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I had to call tech support for a new router and the incredibly patient and helpful guy I got on the line was in the Philippines. He was amazed I'd ever heard of the Philippines. Before we'd solved all of my problems, we knew that he was exactly a 12 hour time difference away and that he and his wife are expecting their first son in March and he's so excited that he can't sleep and that I think Donald Trump is a complete clown and that I am a yellow-dog Democrat (and now he knows what that means) and that I am about to have a new grandson and a new granddaughter.
Hey! What else do you do but chat while waiting for the router to reboot?
Or the dishwasher to drain.
Excellent post. It is sad how much goodness about people that we can miss with our efforts of political correctness. It seems to me that a lot of us who try not to offend others end up missing out on opportunities to learn from people; and the individuals who need most to try to be a bit more PC, (Mr. Trump, for example) never even give any thought to how their comments make others feel.
ReplyDeleteYou (and your readers) learned a lot from your conversation with your Armenian dishwasher repair man. Aren't you glad you just went ahead and asked him? I am.
Oh this life. I'm at the doctor with my mom waiting for her TB test to be read because we're waiting to get her into a skilled nursing facility because she's waiting for the cancer to take her.
ReplyDeleteI was on line a while ago, I can't even remember for what - I'm getting old. But it required several phone calls, by the third one I was so exhausted with trying to decipher thick Indian accents and asking again and again for them to slow down. Please understand I LOVE India, and expressed that to each, and would give much, much to go back. So finally I just said "I'm sorry, I'm hanging up." I know..it was not PC, I'm human. I took a break and finally went back and tried again...again, thick Indian accent, I almost started to cry. I apologized and tried to explain, I love India..blah, blah, blah. Then in a very calm and shy way the operator said..."I am Mexican". Again the exuberant apologizes and I LOVE Mexico. We both started laughing hysterically. Over the 45 min. conversation, waiting for something to download, we talked about everything you could imagine, our families, food, his culture-mine. We asked me what America was like, I asked him what Mexico was like. We talked about his children, mine. We got so far as to talk about scents, yes! I asked him what his favorite thing in the whole world was and he said - to smell the beautiful scents of the world, he told me the name of his shampoo, I told him the name of mine. At the end we both said we were sorry it was that - the end. He said there aren't very many people who are nice to him on the phone, I told him he was so kind it was easy We thanked each other and I think we both had tears in our eyes.
ReplyDeleteI always try to be sensitive and tolerant, but I must say, as I get older, a lot of the changing and evolving language use and definitions are mystifying to me. Fatiguing, even. "Microaggression," for instance.I understand more and more why my grandparents sometimes seemed so bewildered by then-modern culture. My grandmother used to watch TV shows and say she couldn't understand them, and I GET it!
ReplyDeleteI feel like I could swim in the waters of this post for hours and just ponder. The words, I know. I think Carrie has written before about the "rise of intellectualism" and how it feels so elitist and out of touch. My least favorite new word of the decade is "intersectional," although "micro aggression" is a close second. I come back time and time again to that blog post I wrote recently about going the opposite direction - deeper within to a smaller, more internal authority that reminds me to relate to people as individual human beings like you did with the repair person and like so many of the commenters expressed. Instead of looking to some 10,000 foot view of how we treat each other, with rules made of -isms and sanitized stories, I would always rather go down toward the ground where it's messy and complicated until we speak to each other with curiosity and recognize our humanity as we make our way through the weeds. Thank you for getting me thinking this morning.
ReplyDeletehere in europe right now are facing the issue of how to deal with the thousands of migrants that continue to arrive - and we see to have neither language or culture to do so.
ReplyDelete