“Where ya from?” Elizabeth asked. The man responded with a big grin, “New York” he said. His smile revealed a mouth full of unnaturally white teeth obviously having received a great deal of expensive dental work. “What beautiful teeth you have.” threw in Wendy. Another big smile was her reward. “Yes, they are beautiful,” I agreed. It was a slow day in the gift shop where we catered to tourists and we were entertaining ourselves the way we often did when bored, we chatted up the customers, especially the good looking male friendly ones. Our colonial dress probably encouraged them and us. When you wear a costume, it seems less personal. You take on a character. We worked in a restored Colonial Tavern, we called ourselves “wenches” and gave tours, served lunch, and sold lots of tourist type souvenirs. This is the stuff that nobody really needs, but can’t resist buying because it’s cute, unique, sentimental, etc. Actually we cater to almost every human being’s need to consume and tourists are the great, materialistic, consumers of the world. This man had a strong accent, black curly hair, olive skin and a distinct non US male look about him. He was too pretty, his tee shirt was tucked in, his haircut too good and as I mentioned earlier, his teeth way to white. He also had a rather odd slogan on his shirt. It read "The worst president ever."
Elizabeth headed upstairs to start the next tour, Wendy took off to escort the latest bus full of school children safely to lunch and I was left alone with the man. I messed around behind the cash register for awhile and then went out to cruise the aisles a bit. As I came back to the cash register I noticed he was standing near the door apparently killing time. So having always been a politically curious person, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to inquire about the tee shirt. “So who is it?" I queried? Again the smile, followed by a rapid stream of heavily accented English, the gist of which seemed to be that this president was totally inept, had had no serious administrative experience, and was or had been doing a very bad job. I gradually gathered that it was our current president, Obama, he was talking about, so again I asked, “Well what did you think of George Bush? “ Again a gush of words accompanied by the grin and a great deal of praise and so again I queried? “ Where did you say you were from?” “Behind the iron curtain.” he replied, "I am from the Evil Empire." This, I assumed, to mean Russia. I remembered that Reagan had called Russia “The Evil Empire,” so I responded, “You seem to like Republicans?” And I began to realize I was feeling offended, and that I was taking the criticism of our current president personally. I felt some judgments coming forth, What did he know about American presidents? What did he know about democracy? So again, I opened my big mouth and said “So what president do you like?” “President Reagan, he replied, and then began to list the bad presidents, “Carter, Johnson, and Clinton." So again I began to try to reconcile what a former communist would have against our most socialistic presidents and then the light came on. He was a capitalist in all his materialistic glory, he was a tourist! He believed in consumption. So I shut my mouth and didn’t say, “Well you can go into the fried chicken buffet and eat until your arteries shut down and you need to throw yourself on the mercy of our brand new health reform bill, you can run up your credit card on unnecessary junk, go broke and expect our bankruptcy laws to protect you from financial ruin, you could buy a house you can‘t afford and expect our government to rescue you from your mortgage, or you could just go back to Russia and shut the fuck up.” Instead, I swished my long red colonial cape with the red hood and muttered to myself, “What long white teeth, compliments of the American Dental Association, you have, grandmother.”
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