I’ll tell you what.  This immigration thing needs some serious attention.  We just can’t have people like this walking around in all our cities and being so un-American.   All this stink up going on about shifty people slipping across our borders brings to mind something that happened to me a couple years back.   I drove to work one early fall morning with my lights on and realized when I tried to start my car to go home in the late afternoon, I had forgotten to turn them off.

We have two cars.  One of them will emit a ding-ding-ding sound if you shut the car off in this particular situation, as a considerate  reminder that you are a moron about to leave your car with the lights on.   Unfortunately that day I was driving our car that was not so equipped.   In my defense it was dark when I left home that morning, but the sun was up when I reached my destination, so my lights by then were not illuminating anything around me.  But still the circumstance is in itself surprising because the car I was driving was a Toyota.  I have always thought the Japanese are ever-intuitive and would have the foresight to anticipate the need for such a device, particularly in their cars they sell in the good ol’ USA.  As a group Americans kind of like to shift responsibly to others and a lot of times have others do our work for us.  And we are always in a big hurry.  I think you would have to agree the Japanese really fucked up there.

This happened back in the days when I considered a cell phone a cumbersome burden, and frankly those days are still going on.  My wife is always chewing my ass out for leaving my phone on my desk. To be honest with you, if I do happen to remember my cell phone nowadays, it’s only because the one I have now is photo capable and I want to be sure to have it on hand if I’m in a traffic accident so I can take a picture of all the damage you inflict on my car.  Believe me I am going to go panorama ballistic, so you better hope you’re not driving around with your mistress or alter boy.

I went back into the Target building I worked at that day, fussed through the Yellow Pages and finally contacted a  service station in the area that still did some field service work.  They told me it would be at least a half hour before they could get to me, and told me to put the hood up on my car so they could locate it when they finally did arrive in the parking lot.

Me Passing Time While Waiting for a Service Truck

I sat in my car fidgeting and mentally making fun of every passer-by.  I have to tell you I did consider there might be a remote possibility that someone seeing my hood up would make an offer to jump start my car, but that presented a dilemma I have always wrestled with.  I do not want to owe anyone anything.  It’s just the way I operate.  But in a desperate situation, I have been known to accept an accommodation, and at that time I was willing to trample this particular rule of mine.  But I am a pragmatist and held little hope for any assistance from a typical American shopper.  People have things to do and must be on their way.  Who can blame them?   I do the same thing all the time.  If you happen to be in a parking lot with the hood of your car up, don’t count on me helping you out.  It’s not that I am calloused, it’s just that I am pretty sure you have similar feelings and I  don’t want you to feel an obligation is in order.  I hate making people uncomfortable.  And as it turned out I had no need to worry.  At least thirty people scurried by without so much as eye contact.

Well over a half hour of waiting, a beat up pickup truck passed in front of my car, stopped, then backed up.  A young hispanic man stepped out of the truck and approached my open widow.  I thought about rolling it up, but by the time I deliberated where to hide my wallet it was too late.  To my surprise he asked if I needed a jump.  Actually the asking part was not performed in a normal American way.  Because neither of us could communicate in our vernacular language, the conversation was conducted as a series of one word sentences accompanied by some awkward hand maneuvers.  Reluctantly I said “Si,” which happens to be about the extent of my Spanish.  Ever alert to the possibility of shenanigans, I discreetly slipped my wallet underneath my drivers seat and walked to the front of my car.

The young man retrieved jumper cables from the back of his truck, and we both connected them to the appropiate battery terminals of our vehicles.  Twenty seconds later my car was up and running.  Hoping this good Samaritan would not recognize my embarrassment, I quickly walked back to my car seat and retrieved my wallet.  When he saw me digging inside of the imitation leather, he adamantly kept saying “No, no.”  I kept trying to hand him a ten dollar bill but he would not take it.  I tried to tell him ten dollars was a bargain for me, because he had probably saved me a fifty dollar service call.  But he still refused and summed up his feelings about the situation by repeating over and over “Today you, tomorrow me,” an obvious karma type of reference that carried with it the inference that I would one day do the same for him or someone else.

To this day I am overcome with guilt when I recall that episode in my life.  That part I mentioned about not helping you if you need a jump someday- that is still my position.  What kind of piece of shit am I?  You’ll never convince me I’m a total asshole though, because as everyone knows there’s a good chance the only reason you have your hood up is to lure me to stop so you  can rob me at gun-point.  But still.  You see what happens when we let nice people into our country?  They make us feel like pond scum. They just don’t fit in with the rest of us.

Below are some photos of regular Americans and one irregular immigrant.  See if you can pick out the one that has no proof of citizenship.

If you’re like most Americans you zeroed right in on the man wearing the sombrero, but you are embarrassingly mistaken.  Look carefully- he’s holding pistols in both hands.  He couldn’t be more American.  Of course you have to rule out all the other guys with guns and a couple of these fellas are thankfully locked up in American prisons, but that doesn’t make them less American.  The guy in the tan shirt and the rabbi are my neighbors, and the woman is my aunt Agnes. I got this shot of her with my Gopro this Holloween.  I showed up at her door dressed as an Arab and she really came after me with that cane.   Yup, the troublemaker is the guy dressed up like Elvis.  That’s how those sneaky bastards slip into our country.  I bet you didn’t know that.  Now that you do, be a good American and report any Elvis sightings to the authorities.