He's an old guy in a light tan jumpsuit. He's big and bulky with a huge, bulbous nose. Sitting next to him, trapped between him and the window, is a small, dark man from India with business hair and a tightly-groomed mustache. Immediately after the old guy sits down, he asks the Indian man, "Did you have any family stuck in New Orleans?"
"I'm sorry?" the Indian man replies in his thick accent.
"In New Orleans. In the hurricane. Did you have any family trapped there?" I think he believes the Indian man is African-American.
"Oh, no," the Indian man answers politely. "What about you, did you have family there?"
"Oh, I've got lots of family there," the old man proclaims loudly, "but they all had the sense to get out."
"Oh. That's good." The Indian man looks away through the window into total darkness.
So, the old man turns his attention to me. He asks about my laptop, not because he's interested, but because he wants to talk. He starts announcing loudly that Hewlett-Packard is a pretty good company but they make all their products in Singapore. "If we don't stop hiring foreigners and buying foreign products, there won't be anything left over here," he says, passionately.
"Oh," I say, not looking up. I'm trying to communicate nonverbally that I don't want to have this conversation. He takes the hint and clams up. After a minute I glance up and make eye contact with the Indian guy. I try to give him a subtle, apologetic smile. He smiles and nods slightly in greeting, but I'm not sure if I've communicated with him or not.
What do we make of the old guy? He's old, so we just write it off to that, I think. We don't challenge him or worry too much about him, because his influence on the world of tomorrow is negligible. He's probably as dissatisfied with the conversation as we are. In the good old days, people would have joined right in with him and they'd have had a helluva time.
I think things are getting better. It's a slow process, but things are getting better. I wonder what the old guy thinks. I wonder what the Indian man thinks.
I wonder what you think.
Later. Love.
