17 million people. This has got to be the fifth biggest economy in the world and nobody knows each other. I read about this guy who gets on the MTA here, dies. Six hours he's riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices. -Tom Cruise, in Collateral
I usually don't start off my blogs with a quote, but this seemed to make sense. This quote I remembered after the first time I watched the movie Collateral nearly 5 years ago. It made sense to me then, and it still makes sense to me now, especially after the things I considered this morning.
After waking up after to little of sleep, and walking outside to a hot sun, and an indiscernible amount of work left on my plate, my mind didn't run to it's usual place of spite and hatred towards Iraq, it went somewhere new. I said hello with a simple head nod and a 'what's up?' to the Iraqi National Policeman, who stood in the doorway of the Iraqi shower room here on the COP. Despite him being Iraqi, the first thing I noticed was his shirt being a black soccer jersey with the large words TOKYO written on it, and the number 90. This was complimented by his pants, the blue digitized camouflage the Iraqi's wear. Why I only really notice these two things about him is unclear. But at least I'm paying attention, and wondering who the hell wears number 90 in soccer.
He responded to my head nod with a salaam alakem, followed by a slight wave. And then to assume that I was fluent in his language, he fired a fast schonek. Despite the language barrier, I was able to respond with a pleasant zien. When I come home, is this how I'm going to respond to people? In America, we are definitely into ourselves. We don't say hi to one another, (unless you're in Iowa) and to ask someone how there day is, or how they're doing seems somewhat ridiculous and out of the norm to anyone in our society.
Here it is a regular, people in other platoons, Iraqis, we all say hello to each other. We all ask how each others day is. It might be because we are in a war where we are winning the 'hearts and minds' or maybe it's simply due to the fact that we fear these Iraqi police turning on us and wanting them to remember our greetings of the day so they won't put a cap in our heads. But it's their norm to give such greetings, and as a commander of mine once said, "I'll suck Iraqi dick all day long, so when they turn on us they won't shoot me in the back of the head. I don't like them, but they don't know that." So, sure we don't all do the over bearing gestures that they do, the handshake with the kisses on the cheeks, multiple times, but we've met the in the middle, which is a lot further than we are in America. All of this made me think of something I had not thought about in a long time before today.
If a country that doesn't even know where to get rid of their own feces, or pile their trash, along with not liking football or baseball, has the common courtesies of saying hello, and asking how your day is, why can't we stop fretting about our mocha latte with skim milk chocolate shavings and a pinch of cinnamon on top of our non-fat whipped cream, or how we are already 5 minutes late, and stop and say hi to one another? Ask each other how we are doing? Promote some general concern for others in our society, with a return of friendliness and neighborliness that we haven't seen in our society since the 50's.
Even though I don't really exactly know what schonek means, I have the general understanding that it's asking me if I'm doing well. And I only know two responses to it, which might make things easier in the long run, but I'll tell you saying zien (good) or muy zien (bad), harbors a nice feeling. Perhaps they don't care about how I'm really feeling, just as I don't really care how they are feeling, but eventually I think that could change. The more and more I am subjected to saying hello, and being friendly with the enemy, the better I feel, the more concerned I become. If I can do that with enemies, how much better will it be when I do it with you America?
Don't let me be misunderstood, I'm not saying that we should converse in the drollest of small talk which really does waste every ones time, but a friendly hello, or a helping hand with a heavy lift would be just fine.
I got a little used to this sort of thing while living in Iowa, where the common courtesy of saying hello, is still in existence, and that in itself is one of the reasons why I miss Iowa. It's not just that saying hello is a 'nice' thing that we should do just to do, but it opens the gateways to other friendly, goodly Samaritan things, like holding doors open, and any other generally nice thing that we can do on an everyday basis to help each other out. In L.A., I know that everyone is way to busy to do this. The looks I get when I'm home and send greetings to sour faced soccer moms, or biscuit faced football dads; the reactions are priceless, they are not even sure how to react, for the reasons that a) they have a youth sending them a greeting that is nothing but cordial, and b) it's been so long since they've heard a stranger talk to them, they're probably thinking they are about to be robbed, which leads to c) they start moving there hands to grip their personal belongings tighter before sending back a questioningly sounding response, which is normally just a repeat of the same greeting I just sent them, due to shock. North Carolina isn't much different. And though I can't speak for all the 50 United States of our Union, at least to NC and CA, it's time you get over yourselves, and if you've ever read this blog before, you know how I feel about the spoiled Americans who take everything for granted; this is just one more of those things.
I still have hope though, that things can change, that even I, even you can make a difference. So whether it's schecku mocku here, or what's up at home, I'm going to interact with you and not just to take your money, punk. See you on the streets in 3 months, where you'll have a front row seat to this American Revolution.
Be polite to all, but intimate with few. -Thomas Jefferson
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