Yesterday afternoon, I went to the local post office to mail a package. It was a single errand out of many, one of those to-do list items that usually ends up dead and forgotten afterwards, killed by a strikethrough line. Not this time, though.
The line stood approximately 15 deep, shuffling slowly forward. Once I was six spots away from being served, a short and skinny female customer with long black hair and a stonewashed denim dress stepped away from the counter. She violently snatched a small brown parcel from off the counter and raised her voice. In an instant, a mundane and everyday context had become an opportunity for entertainment; the floor was hers.
"I heard exactly what you just said," the lady seethed through clenched teeth. "You called me a white nigger, don't think I didn't hear you under your breath. Look at my skin. Look at it. Do I look Mexican to you? My grandparents came to this country from Europe. Europe."
All eyes locked on her, then panned slowly to the accused. The teller was an older gent who, like most of the folks who work in American post offices, looked a lot like Cliff from Cheers. He just sat there frozen, bug-eyed and stunned. "I didn't hear him say anything," the queued-up multitude buzzed, looking at each other, all involuntarily raising their eyebrows and two open palms to shoulder level. "I definitely think I would have noticed if he'd said that."
"I know what I heard him say," the woman called out to nobody in particular, as she clutched her unmailed package and backed away towards the exit door. "Sometimes the world seems like one big sausage festival."
Exhales, exclamations of "wow," general agreement on how nutty she was, and then quickly back to the business of waiting. For my part, mine was that most 21st Century of reactions: I am so blogging about this.
I can claim a seven-year blogging career the same way Ken Griffey, Jr. can say he's played 19 seasons in the majors -- both of us have spent plenty of time on the disabled list. When I started out, broadcasting a personal perspective to a global audience was an abstract concept. Nowadays, there are over 70 million of these things, and roughly a third of them come from right here in the U.S.. All fuzzy numbers these, but for a nation of 301 million, that's 23 million blogs.
So as you're walking around today, keep in mind that there is roughly an 8 percent chance that any given person is a blogger of some sort, maybe even one who fancies themselves an observing journalist. You never know who might be watching or writing when you pay for your potato chips with a pile of nickels, fart in the subway, or leave the gas cap on top of the car at the Chevron station as you drive off.
Because we're all the protagonists of our own lives, protagonists of our own blogs. We frame reality in our own special, self-serving ways, and we all have the luxury to leave out the parts that make us look vulnerable and idiotic. There is no true center of the universe, just endlessly overlapping Rashomon-like versions of the truth, populated by heroes, jerks, clowns and assholes.
But there's that one in twelve chance that the woman who caused the stir at the post office yesterday has her own blog, has already posted some sort of play-by-play of the event from her own rational perspective, a scathing critique of a racist and sexist culture without end. Perhaps she has hundreds, thousands of loyal readers, and is a post-feminist icon and a cult hero. Where are you, angry misunderstood lady? I know I'll be keeping an eye out, just in case you're out there.
