It works for me
Ihad to have a blood test one recent morning, which meant fasting, so a hungry me told my wife a story about the last time I fasted, that time for a colonoscopy.
Before a person has a colonoscopy the prospective patient is told to eat only gelatin and drink only water and apple juice for basically a day before the procedure. The patient also is instructed to drink a bag of this horrid-tasting sludge that induces diarrhea. The idea is to cleanse the colon so the medical personnel can have a look at what’s going on down there without dealing with, well, poop in the path.
Being a rule follower, I followed the proscribed protocol. Such was not the case for a couple of other patients. They were sent home when they conceded they’d violated the preparation regimen for the colonoscopy.
As I was being outfitted in my backless hospital gown — particularly appropriate for a colonoscopy, no? — a nurse talked to yet another woman on the other side of the curtain. I’d seen the woman in the lobby earlier. She was a chubby Mexican-American woman in her 60s. I recognized her voice because she’d been gabbing nonstop in the lobby.
When the nurse asked her in Spanish if she’d fasted for the required period, the woman said yes, that she’d only had a “steak sandwich and papas fritas” for dinner the night before, and had only eaten “una salchicha y papas con huevos, solamente un poquito … y una tortilla de maiz tambien” that morning. Translating into English, the woman said she only had a steak sandwich and fries the night before and only a sausage and potatoes with eggs … plus one corn tortilla, that morning.
The nurse said regarding the woman eating during the prep period, “Digamos nada,” which means, “We said (eat) nothing,” to which the patient responded, “Es nada,” or, “That is nothing.”
The woman was sent on her way, muttering as she walked out of the clinic about how stupid such “reglas,” or rules, are.
Now that would be a funny story no matter where it happened, but for those of us living on the border, in a largely Mexican-American culture, as I have for much of my life, it is even funnier. That’s because in such places we know about the importance of eating in the culture/daily life, and we also know about the propensity to cut corners and not heed rules thought to be niggling.
Does it drive me crazy when many of my students cut corners because that’s what they’ve been taught by their parents and others? It does. Does it make me nuts when people park right front of Walmart and Target, against all parking rules, then let out the whole family while holding up and possibly even endangering other drivers? It does.
But does that mean the life we live here on the border has been damaged by immigration, as Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller insist, or has become less American because of changes in “demographics” that real American people didn’t vote for, as Laura Ingraham snarls? Not really.
Border life is rich, full of scrumptious food, warm people, generally good music (although I hate most corridos) and great backyard parties. It’s different, it’s unique, but it’s American.
Sadly, certain folks are making political and media careers from exploiting our differences. Yet I went to a Padres baseball game in San Diego, another border town, over the weekend, before having dinner in Fashion Valley. At both places there were people of all colors and combinations mixing and matching and getting along beautifully.
Yes, white, black, Latino, Asian, all mixed together and doing wonderfully: that’s my America. And it works for me and many, many others.
Bret Kofford teaches writing at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley. His opinions don’t necessarily reflect those of SDSU or its employees. Kofford can be reached at kofford@roadrunner.com