Waste

Stage 03: "Feeling Somewhat Xenophobic"

Did you know that for $5 you can eat for an entire working week? That's right. Taco Bell, man. That place is fuckin' AWESOME, and that's no lie. All that's left is to wonder why the people downstairs don't cook the food they serve there. The apartment below us? Yeah, a family of Mexicans live there, and I don't mean a mom, dad, and two kids, either. Hell, there are three generations in that one little three-bedroom..! But that's not important. The problem is their food. It just… stinks. I mean, you can't even place the odor. You keep sniffing and sniffing and… nothing, y'know? Today the closest guess I can make is pancakes and cat feces. And another thing, who cooks at midnight? Can't tell you how many times I've woken up choking from the stench of garlic in the middle of the night…

Recoom speaks fluent Spanish. I didn't find out until a couple of months ago, when they first moved in, all eight of them. Didn't know they ate dinner at midnight, either, but that's somethin' else. The whole frickin' building stunk with garlic, right? And Ginyu—he's got mad sinus troubles, so really strong odors'll trigger 'im headaches—was getting sick again, so he told one of us to go down and tell those guys to knock it off.

Since 'Coom and I were up still, we flipped a bottlecap to see which one of us was going down. Of course, it'd hafta be me…

Hey, sorry to interrupt your dinner or whatever but stop using so much garlic, yeah? You're making my friend sick.

"¿Qué?"

I said, you're making my friend sick. Knock it off with the garlic, yeah?

"¿Qué?"

…You don't speak English, do you?

"No hablo Inglés."

So I went back upstairs. "Everything set?"

Nah. They don't speak English.

"Shoot. I shoulda went... Be right back."

So he broke it down español style to them and it didn't change a thing. Or maybe it did. Now that we have el señor Recoom in our arsenal, they'll be hearing from us a bit more. Either way, that odor hasn't let up any since that day. It kinda makes me mad, y'know? Not just about them not lightening up, but that one of us should have to cater to the fact that they choose not to speak the language of the land. And believe me, 9 out of 10 of them do speak English and fluently, at that. Listen up, if you're coming to a country where you know the native tongue is different from yours, don't you think you oughta bone up a bit? But as an American, who am I to talk? Hell, practically all of Europe caters to our linguistic laziness…

You know what? Who cares? Who honestly gives a shit? Sure, we could bother to learn, but why would we? I don't want to talk to foreigners, do you? It's one thing for directions or the time, but hey… I got nothin' against immigrants or aliens or whatever. This country's supposed to be the 'melting pot,' right? I think it's enough to just let them live here and work. It's not a matter of them not being able to speak the language; it's a matter of them not wanting to.

There. I've done my patriotic duty. I'm gettin' some tequila.