The Secret to Europe

No photo of the boulangerie, but this was just down the street

The smell of fresh baked bread. Is there anything on earth so glorious as that smell on a Paris morning? It was Friday and the perfectly round fruit-topped tarts were glistening with sugar and the muffins with their floured plumpness were the first part of an equation whose answer was a comfortable chair, cup of tea, and a good book. But it was the freshly baked baguettes that drew me in.

The mademoiselle behind the counter was chatting with the dignified madame l’customer ahead of me, their words lilting about in that frolicsome French that seems always on the verge of a loving tut-tut.

When it was my turn I stepped forward, gave a friendly smile and nod, and said in my very best French “Un baguette si vous plait.” I was killing it. An integrated part of this morning in the boulangerie.

Except maybe not. The mademoiselle seemed annoyed by my presence. She wasn’t rude, but nor was she nice. She was curt and briskly businesslike with my bread, so different from the affectionate glow of moments before, and barely looked at me as she handed over the bag and greeted the next person in line with a friendly hello.

Maybe the old stereotypes were right. Maybe the French (or Parisians at least) really were still rude to foreigners. Maybe my inevitable accent was just not good enough for their demanding sensibilities. How terribly disappointing!

Good thing it wasn’t true. It took me some time to figure out. Countless more small interactions across the continent, but eventually I noticed the missing piece. And what a difference it made.

So when I watched three young Americans make the same mistake I had, ordering their sandwiches on the Rue Cler last time I was in Paris, and receiving the same terse Parisian response, I was ready to share what I’d learned.

That's my big mystical secret

“It helps a lot if you say hello first.” I told them (not bothering to say hello first because we’re Americans). “It took me awhile to notice it, since back home we smile and get straight to the point, but over here they really like it if you greet them before saying what you want.”

Being Americans, they were guarded about this stranger speaking to them, their defensive caution struggling against the desire to learn and enjoy their vacation.

“So if you just start with a quick ‘Bon jour madame’ in France, ‘Buon giorno signore’ in Italy, whatever, you usually get a much better reaction.” They kind of mumbled a response, still wondering when I’d demand their wallets, so I let them be and stepped up to the counter.

“Bon jour madame” I said to the mistress of sandwiches, who chirped back the answering greeting. “Un sandwich au jambon et fromage, si vous plait.” And we were best buddies by the time she passed across my lunch.

The Americanas were immersed in their guide book when I turned around, but perhaps somewhere down the road they’ll speak from experience when they whisper to someone “It helps if you greet them first.”

A visitor in my own land, for a moment

The first announcement was so bland and polite. “The eastbound train on platform two is going out of service. Please do not board this train. It will be departing momentarily.” The crowd of would-be occupants leaned in, wanting to pounce. But with the doors closed, the semi-broken BART train was impregnable, they could only stand and stare.

“The train on platform two is ready to depart, please move back from the yellow line. So it can depart.” Mild irritation leaked from the control room through the speakers, but the crowd continued its irreverent looming.

“We got another train waiting in the tunnel right behind that one, people, but it ain’t going nowhere until you all move back behind the yellow line.” Slight roils in the crowd as people stepped forward, onto the yellow line, to see who was holding things up.

It was all just another moment in Bay Area Rapid Transit, uninteresting to natives, but I was not yet in those familiar shoes. I watched the semi-functionality through the lens of Paris’s excellent metro system. And when the next train arrived, and people just HAD to get on even after it was packed, blocking the doors and ignoring the announcements of “There is another train right behind this one. We have four trains in the next ten minutes. Please do not block the doors.” I watched it as a participant in Germany’s polite people-moving procedures, balanced by the memory of fighting my way into Sri Lankan third-class compartments.

I could visit this place

I stood there, an American in America, but viewed the perturbations and public percolations through the lens of a visitor. Not being part of the crowd, everything they did was demonstrative.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but I usually find my culture shock in the grocery store. The expanses of food, a surplus of success unimaginable to 99% of the humans who have ever lived. With air conditioning and pleasant music (and sometimes porn!). And all processed and packaged, distant from the soil and your hands. And the ankle-deep irritation in people pushing to get their Fat-Free Greek Yogurt, creamy and luscious and decadent but hold the calories cuz this is America. I feel like an alien anthropologist, observing their crankiness while they live The Dream Life. I feel no scorn, but love these strange humans, just as I loved the Venezuelan demonstrators, the Zambian church-goers, the Nepali schoolchildren, and the Burmese street vendors. It’s easy to feel affection, from a distance.

But this time I hadn’t returned from the developing world, so it wasn’t our ease that astonished me. After six weeks in Western Europe, it was our difficulties. Our cheery little BART-that-could, working so hard for so long at a task so large and so thankless, with so little maintenance and so much controversy, compared to the efficiency of a more collectivist continent. Bunch of socialists. Arriving on time. Pish!

It’s not a matter of superiority (ex: Charles de Gaulle Airport, photo, which is blows, compared with SFO). I’m not bagging on America (put your flag rapiers away). It’s obvious to me that there is no best country. It’s all just humanity. Fascinating and ridiculous. Doing its muddling best. But when nothing is automatic or assumed, and nothing belongs to me, everything is more visible, and riding home becomes a cultural experience. It’s wonderful.

But there’s a price to the power of the witness. The first week, not quite reconnected yet, conversations with friends can be slightly stilted, and the stimuli of the day leave me feeling...unfinished. Still hungry. Stability has a muffling effect, the ease of the easy and its reduction in vibrance. But this phase is finite, and mundane irritation is tragically easy to reacquire, but during the transition I feel like a traveler held in place.

But home is a steady thing. It grows over and into my consciousness. It takes about a week to put down the mindset of movement and take up the perspective of permanence. But soon I can feel the streetplan spreading around me, sit quietly with friends without the need to say “What have you been up for for the last two months?”, and remember all the marvelous details that evolve when you’re in one place for a while. Rock climbing with friends, a variety of tea options, and clean laundry all the time! And tonight, I’ll have dinner with friends, in a place I know well, at a time I can predict. And that’s a beautiful thing.

But first, I have to go to the store. I hope there’s no one blocking the particular tortilla chips I like. That annoys me so much.

Reverential expression of the divine, or just obsessed with boobs?

“Ugh. Great. Tits again. Cuz that’s all women are. I am so sick of that.”

“No way! Look at the care, the precision, the ornamentation and dignity of the carvings. And the serene smiles, delicate hand mudras, and lengthened earlobes of enlightenment. These are demonstrations of reverence for feminine deities, or femininity itself as divine.”

“But why do they all have to be bare breasted? The dudes get to cover their junk.”

“Maybe they didn’t see boobs as nudity, maybe that’s just how women dressed. Lots of cultures are like that, hence National Geographic’s popularity among boys.”

“So why are they so big? This isn’t Sweden. Men are depicted pretty normally, so why are all the ta-tas supersized?”

Lydia and I had different responses to the ubiquitous boobage of Angkor Wat. In the mass of carved curves, one of us saw a monotonous obsession with female bodies, and the other saw the meticulous expression of their sanctity.

What do you think?

Do the multitudinous bare breasts of Angkor Wat reveal an obsession with one aspect of female anatomy, with an emphasis on exaggerated, even unnatural dimensions?

Or do they reflect a culture that revered femininity as a goddess, an apsara or devata?

Is it artistic license and style, or another oppressive patriarchal hypersexuality?

Or is it both, a fascination that was both sexual and respectful, boobcentric reverence?

Or are we missing the point entirely?

There are worse things than having been racist

The contractor was measuring the ceiling in my lady’s house when he noticed he’d tracked dog poo all over the kitchen floor. It was awkward, but he helped clean it up, cleaned his shoe, and we all went on with our day. He did not go deliberately step in more and lay fresh prints.

What if his coworker had left the smudges before he arrived? Should he say “Well, I didn’t start it” then go find a steaming fresh pile of Rover’s Revenge to spread around? It’s easy when we’re talking about puppy poop, but what if it’s something worse?

In episode 349 of The Savage Lovecast, Dan Savage talks about the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when asserting the virus was an STI could get you in a fight, as people resisted the guilt of having inadvertently caused harm. But eventually they accepted the facts and evolved. He compares this to those who still deny climate change. There comes a time when you have to accept that what you've been doing isn't right anymore, and update.

He doesn’t advocate convictions for past mistakes, or tortured guilt for things done when we didn’t know any better, but to double down and willfully continue them once you do? That’s a problem.

Scaling back from lethal disease and global catastrophe, how about being accidentally offensive? Tonight in the Netherlands, and tomorrow in Belgium and Luxembourg, Zwarte Piet will help Sinterklaas deliver presents to all the little boys and girls. Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) is basically one of Santa’s elves, with one glaring difference: he’s in blackface, big red lips, afro wig and everything.

Controversy over the figure has been growing for decades. The (white) majority says “But it's our tradition!” (True.) “We don't mean anything racist by it!” (Good, thank you.) And sometimes “If I meet you you’ll get a bullet through your head.” Charming.

I know people resist changing traditions, but just a couple sentences for perspective:

-Halloween was long based on vandalism, not changing to its current emphasis on costumes and treats until World War II

-Thanksgiving is increasingly about family, and less about genocidal religious extremists, or is that just me?

-Even Zwarte Piet himself didn’t show up until 1850, his name not standardized until the early 20th century, around the same time Sinterklaas stopped kidnapping naughty kids into slavery. And did anyone grow up believing Saint Nick came from Turkey? Well he did, but we changed it to the North Pole (and Sinterklass moved to Spain) without undue rage. So why cling so fiercely to an outdated racist icon?

(Zwarte Piet briefly took over the child slavery racket, though that’s been phased out too. We’ll talk about the function of a black character selling white children into slavery another time.)

This is all very easy for me to say; I didn't grow up with Zwarte Piet. Also, I don't really give an enraged caboodle about changing holiday details (no, I don't watch Fox News' preposterous War on Christmas either). My lady, on the other hand, grew up in The Netherlands in the days before people saw Piet as racist. She had those happy childhood mornings, when the friendly character threw candies and handed out gifts. She loved that character, but when age and perspective showed her its racist overtones, she adjusted. In her words: “A short moment of nostalgic pain is MORE than worth it for doing the right thing.”

Now want to hear something cool? The Netherlands is showing its impressive character yet again. Not waiting for everyone to find their empathy, they are changing, slowly but steadily. In previous years they’ve toned down the blackface by removing the big red lips (and earrings), consciously avoiding portrayals of him as inferior to the white Sinterklaas, and this year they’re adding other colors of Piet, including cheese yellow and (gasp!) white.

I can only imagine it’s a matter of time until people look back and say “Remember back when we had that awful racist character? Nutty!” (Though I expect the overtly racist and anti-immigration parties like the PVV and Vlaams Belang will cling to their crusty obstinacy far into the future.)

So as America roils, burns, and shatters under the weight of our own racism and malfeasance, the sickness in our system that seems unwilling to change, and I figure out my own minuscule part in it, I’m going to look at the waffle-striped Piet this year with a smile, and hope that the arc of history might speed itself up a bit here too...

Ample? Fat? Or something more creative?

“What about this one? How does it look?” His girlfriend considered for a moment, head tilted to the side and lips pursed just a little.

“I like it, the color is good on you, but you need another size.” The shirt was stretched over his broad chest, and ample frame. This is Venezuela, the land of thick, doughy arepas for breakfast and afternoon snacks, and the man’s intellectual career has him sitting in board rooms and at conference tables around the country. “You need size…”

She turned to search for a larger shirt, but the man shopping next to them was more...helpful.

“You need size half-a-cow” he offered.

This is Venezuela, one of those countries that does not mince words. Whereas I might be left grasping for politely indicative words like “ample”, in Venezuela? They don’t mess around.

The question of which way is better is one for the sages, bores, and dorm room floors, but one thing is for sure: if you’re going to live in a place that’s this direct, you’d better have a good sense of humor.

Luckily for my Venezuelan friend of the substantive girth, he has no problem laughing at himself, and neither does Alvaro, my friend and the program director of the Witness for Peace Southwest delegation that brought me to the country.

But Alvaro is no half-a-cow. What would they hang a nickname on, then? The bushy eyebrows? I am sensitive about that one, after years of people telling me I look angry, when actually I’m just ⅛ Neanderthal. But no, it’s not the brows that the man on the steps of the Cathedral commented on.

At five foot and a few, Alvaro comes up to my shoulder. I always like people who do that, especially after living near Holland, habitat of the humongous. Indigenous people throughout Latin America are frequently vertically modest, but Venezuela is predominantly mestizo, ie descendants of Europeans, with Amerindians making up only 2% of the population.

So Alvaro is short. And the man on the steps noticed. He also noticed the calm confidence and knowledge with which Alvaro was conducting us around Caracas, and he had a question.

“Oye, bonsai Tarzan, which way to the metro?”

Bonsai Tarzan. That is quite an image. Not one that every altitudinally modest individual might appreciate. Alvaro politely gave the man directions, and off we all went on our days.

Note: Last weekend Alvaro’s house suddenly collapsed. Luckily no one was hurt, but he, his wife, and their five year old daughter are now homeless. I cannot imagine what this would be like. I set up a fundraising page here, and urge you to contribute, even just a few dollars, if you can.

Thank you.

Cuba. Where do I start?

Where do I start to talk about Cuba?

A prequel in the Miami hotel, ostensibly close but a world away from Cuba, where a plethora of pillows was unable to conceal the fact that my bed was a subwoofer for the karaoke downstairs, where semi-drunk people sang semi-offkey versions of semi-current pop songs?

Or an introduction via the insanity of the modern world, where 40 minutes on a plane take you from that world, tipsy tourists trouncing Timberlake, to the liquid hips and notes of Cuban salsa? A flight so short they barely have time to hand you a soda, but transfers you from the problems and advantages of modern America to the significantly different problems and advantages of modern Cuba.

Do I begin at or our first stop, minutes from the airport, at the Plaza de la Revolucion? We filtered among the Germans and Russians across 72,000 square meters of merciless cement, which broiled our feet while our eyes drifted up like steam to the 100 ton steel outlines of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos on the facades of the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of Communications buildings. The two iconic guerrilleros looked over the tops of our wide-brimmed hats, burning-despite-caked-on-sunscreen faces, and clicking DSLRs at the Jose Marti Monument, where Fidel has customarily addressed a million Cubans at a time, ie half the population of Havana.

No, none of that has the almost tangible flair of Cuba.

Nor did Cuba start at the Hotel Nacional, a tower of opulence made of marble, gold, glass, and gangster money, which became state property after the revolution. We walked between honeymooners and the well-to-do, continued our advanced course in mojitos, and tried to pay attention to our guide despite the distraction of an ocean just THAT shade of blue. Gorgeous, but still not Cuba.

For me, Cuba really started on the Malecon. That’s where the entry stamp for my soul was placed.

Basking and lounging for five miles from the mouth of Havana Harbor to down past the Hotel Nacional, the Malecon is a wide concrete stage where waves dance during storms, but the rest of the time the performance is human, Cuban, intimate and welcoming.

During the day...I’m not exactly sure what people do on the Malecon during the day. It looked like some fishing and a lot of hanging out, as our bus passed on the way to meeting talented artists, hearing celestial choirs, or gawking at stunning ballet dancers. It looked relaxing, though with a sun like that, I can only assume they were catching fish already boiled by the time they left the water. But by night? That is when Cuba happens, in drifts of music, bounces of conversation, sloshes of kissing, and hurricanes of laughter.

Life is lived in the open here, not sequestered behind closed doors in front of flickering screens, and walking that esplanade is a slideshow of the human experience. Babies might be nursing or napping, while kids play ball in front of families passing rum and tales. Sisters joke with brothers, friends greet cousins, and wandering musicians will play a tune or ten for a peso or two.

No, I don't have a picture of sexuality. Sorry.

Cuba is an erotic land, where shame and the demonization of sexuality have not taken root as they have in Puritan-schizophrenic America. I can’t claim to understand this, but suspect it was assisted by the accidental embargo on Hollywood’s impossible physical standards, our iron maiden gender roles, and (so-called) “women’s” magazines and their misogynistic advertising sadism. Maybe it’s the absence of these mutilating scripts and pressures, or maybe it’s just the fertile sensuality of Cuba itself, but somehow the Cubans never learned that they’re supposed to be ashamed of sexuality, private about passion, and removed from the physical lusciousness of being alive.

So the Malecon also sways with a current of kisses, entwined limbs, and touching torsos. It’s not remotely pornographic, not nearly indecent, and profoundly more tasteful than our commercials. And in contrast to our youth-obsessed mania, you are as likely to see a fifty-year old caressing his long-time lady as you are the scalding desire of adolescents. It’s frickin beautiful.

Merely witnessing the sheer Life on the Malecon is nourishing to a soul grown withered and weary in the Fear, Distance, and Isolation of “Western” Culture, but the Cubans do much more than simply exist in real-life elegance. They invite you to share it.

Accustomed to passing strangers with an American air of “Don’t worry, I’m no threat to you, but you’d better not come after me”, I was surprised and delighted when strangers showed themselves to be friends I just hadn’t met yet, calling out to me to come over, talk, meet, laugh with the family. Share your story, share this rum, share our lives.

Solidarity. It’s more than a political buzzword.

I’d long wanted to go to Cuba, and knew enough to feel confident that I had come via the two best organizations possible for such a trip, Altruvistas and Ethical Traveler, but I confess, wandering through the limp tourist morass of the Plaza de la Revolucion, and checking into the weary elegance of the Hotel Nacional, I had wondered if a tour would allow me to actually meet some Cuba.

But that first night, exhausted and adjusting, walking for an hour or two between families of new friends (I had three sets of phone numbers, addresses, and invites to come visit by the time we got back to the hotel), I felt myself to be in Cuba.

And I liked it.

Why I travel.

Take me back.

Take me back to rotting garbage on dirty streets, where water is a luxury and stink a certainty. I want to feel unwashed and threadbare sheets on hard beds, and pay more than I think I should for it. I want suspicious food, where I savor every bite, knowing it might be the one that ruins the next day. I want to take nothing for granted, be vulnerable and love everyone who shows me kindness.

I want to be concerned about bed bugs, so I remember their absence. I want to be aware of the malarial menace of mosquitoes, so that I notice when my ankles are unblemished.

I want to be foreign to the irritation I felt on the BART train yesterday, “delayed” a couple irrelevant seconds by the guy who was too busy talking on his phone to put his ticket in correctly. I want to feel only incomprehension for the ambient discontent of the spoiled and comfortable, knowing that they are me. I want to stay shocked that people complain and grimace while they wait a few minutes for delicious, safe, nutritious food, prepared by people they won't even bother to thank, unmindful of the insane miracle that brings it to us, every single god-blessamned day.

That work, those wages...
a foreign experience

I want to look at those wrinkles everyone here has between their eyes, the scowl of the perpetually concerned, the mouths of unspecified tension, and feel a wash of gratitude that cleans my face and lifts my lips. I want to be aware of the masses that have so little, every country on Earth. I want to remember how scarce and precious food was for all of human history except the past tiny sliver, invisible on the timeline, and how horrifically we will return to that state...probably sooner than we realize, so that I can stand in awe in a grocery store again, unrushed, uncritical, reverent.

I want to move slowly.

I want to disconnect.

I want to be away from screens. I want to read a book.

I want to talk to strangers.

Here I have friends, but move among the distrusted, suspicious without reason, fearful until proven innocent. There is little danger here. Screw the newspapers, the evening news is a betrayal.

There I will know no one, but might move among possibility, alert and careful, but accessible and listening. The danger is much higher there. The intimacy with human brutality and human kindness, experiential and firsthand, the latter outnumbering the former, despite brutality's instant potency.

Here I can go in comfort. I can pass my day easily, accomplishing tasks in virtual reality, e-living in binary code that I can never touch, my life erased by a magnet.

There every hour will be uncertain, the world so foreign, so unknowable, that it might touch me at any minute. It will be under my fingernails and between my toes. Present on my skin and stained into my clothes. It's possible I will bleed. It's possible I will help, just a little. It's possible I will reach new magnitudes of suffering, or experience joy so visceral you'd have to pay a fortune to chase it.

Take me back. I want to travel.

Can I ask you a question? Am I an a**hole?

I'm not used to women in bars looking at me like I'm a complete a**hole.

Truth be told, I'm not used to women in bars looking at me at all, but here was this woman,

mouth twisted in disdain, staring at me with eyes dripping scorn. I wasn't expecting that reaction.

I've misplaced all my Scotland pics, so I'll
go with anonymously European ones

She'd asked me a familiar question, “Is it difficult being back in the US?” As I mentioned before, it is indeed pretty weird, including the strange sensation of being the same nationality as most other people and specifically: talking the same.

I suppose that's part of why I've been drifting over to accents from the UK more often lately.

Accents have always entertained me, since I was a wee lad who would occasionally talk like an Indian who thought he was Jamaican, often discussing who had “plump little bongos.” Nonsensical, but it seemed to entertain my family. I ask anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me to let me know when it gets annoying and I'll try to stop.

Yesterday I listened to a Freakonomics podcast about tipping, which included a woman who faked a French accent to get more tips. I've never done that. I have never used my play to try to gain anything, or deceive anyone in any way that feels exploitative. It's usually when I ask for directions, which I assume people would answer anyway, but this way they seem to do so with little more of a smile. Is that exploitative? Deceptive?

No harm done. Right?

This woman in the bar did not agree. When I told her that I've been faking accents occasionally, she found it a disgusting betrayal of a stranger's trust. “So you're basically making fun of everyone you fool, thinking you're better than them.”

Not in the slightest! I certainly never think less of anyone I speak to. But it tickled a question I've long had. Is it wrong? It is basically lying after all...is there such a thing as a victimless crime?

Is it unethical to fake an accent in casual conversation with strangers?

A: No way, it's a fun way to make a boring interaction a little more interesting for everyone.

B: Not as long as you're not trying to trick anyone into anything, like the tipping.

C: Yes, technically, but it's a harmless misbehavior.

D: Yes, it's lying and you should stop immediately.

(Vote on the poll on my wordpress version, which interfaces more easily with the polling program.)

Is it weird being back in America?

Is it weird being back in America?

I wasn't sure how to answer that question. “Not...really.” Adjusting to Stateside norms was pretty easy; I did grow up here, after all. I can handle silverware and I never picked up on the whole spitting thing anyway. But as the last month has passed I've noticed a couple ways in which I am still adjusting after all.

Trishaw drivers know better than anyone how to survive
in the traffic in Yangon, Myanmar

Number One: crossing the street. In 90% of the world, as far as I can tell, moving around on the street is based on the principle of not making any sudden moves or changes of direction. If you can estimate everyone else's trajectory, you can move around them.

To cross the street overseas: start walking into traffic, not fast, not slow, no sharp directional adjustments. If possible, walk straight at the back of a passing car. It will continue moving, so when you reach it you will slide right into the space it just vacated. Continue this until you've Froggered your way across the street.

It's similar to the way you don't try to avoid the cockroaches, just trust that they'll avoid you.

But in America, if you do this, all the cars on the street do something extremely unexpected in the global mind: they stop. Or at least, they slow down and wave you across. Now, instead of sliding unobtrusively through traffic, you are blocking it. Dangit, Americans, stop being so polite!

So I have had to go back to obeying formal traffic rules. It's weird.

One need not make plans in the San Blas Archipelago

Number Two: I rarely planned anything more than a day or two in advance for the past few years. I would reach a town and stay there until I was done, during which time I'd hear about some other place within a six/seven hour bus ride. Go. I am not an itinerary sort of guy. But here, this means I don't get out much, since everyone else has social calendars booked weeks in advance.

Me: “Hey, you wanna do something?”

Friend: “Sure! Let's get sushi! When works for you?”

Me: “How about tonight?”

Friend: “I'm booked until January.”

I gotta get the hang of that. Anyone want to go get sushi...in January?

Does this dude in Kuala Lumpur seem worried about his image?

And finally, there's Image. I've made a career out of trying to resist this, probably as a means of coping with my lack of fashion passion (as my closet of blank-ass clothes will attest), but my skills were were honed overseas. In Nicaragua they described my sandals as “Jesus shoes” and I kept wearing them. In Sri Lanka I sewed up the entire left side of my shorts with the wrong color thread and thought no more about it. In Myanmar I could not have cared less when it was a woman's style bicycle I rode.

You can't be too picky about your image if you get your hair
cut in a saloon. Can I get a sarsaparilla with this perm?

I brought that all home with me. The friend moving out of my new room offered to loan me her woman's style bike and I accepted, no worries, who cares if people think I look silly? It's a bike. That ended up not working out, so I have my manly man ride after all, but whatever, it's shruggalicious.

And I had to smile in the grocery store as I bought a big bag of toilet paper, thinking about how poop-phobic Americans are, and remembering confessions of people who were humiliated to buy the stuff. “I buy it at Cosco in gigantic packs so that I don't have to do it very often.” Whatever! I'm not embarrassed by anything!

Can you guess what these Pa-O kids in a mountain village
in Myanmar think of our image concerns and poop-phobia?

But on the walk home, toilet paper casually under my arm on the busy street, I saw a bag of clothes hangers on the sidewalk. I inherited four hangers with the closet, but I now had seven shirts, with premonitions of more to come. I needed hangers. And here was a bag full of them, free on the sidewalk. We're also an intensely germaphobic nation, but the odds these hangers were actually infected and infested, scabies, hepatitis, bed bugs? Very slight.

But I walked right on past. What would people think if I was rummaging through the garbage on the street?

Oh.

Damn. That's disappointing.

It's weird being back in America.