so sick of white america

written November 17, 2020 ~

I could have gone to Mavis Discount Tire in Kingston on Saturday for two new tires, but I wanted to wait until Monday to give Walt (my regular mechanic) a chance to do the work, because I prefer to give my money to small local businesses rather than large corporations.  

I could have driven the 30 minutes into Kingston to sit in Mavis' heated waiting area (in a comfortable chair) while they worked on my car instead of having to walk a mile up the road in the cold to the closest country store (and back), where the only place to sit is outside, since their small dining area is closed due to the pandemic.  

I could have paid Mavis $150 to do the work instead of the $200 Walt charged me, because they can afford to drop their prices (several times) in order to appease me because I'm poor, and tires are expensive.  

I could have made an appointment with Mavis so I knew how long the work would take, and therefore have a window within which to schedule my day, but I chose to drop my car off with Walt at 9:30am, who still didn't have the work done by 11:30am after I had walked the mile to the country store, drank a cup of hot chocolate, walked around and looked at all the items for sale to kill time before walking over to the Dollar General to do the same, then walking the mile back to Walt's where all he'd managed to do was get my car up on the lift.  

if I'd gone to Mavis, the work would have been done in less than the two hours it took Walt to get my car up on the lift, after which I still had to stand around outside for at least 30 more minutes before he finally offered for me to sit in his office and read his newspaper while he and his buddies loudly spouted their pro-fascist political agendas and blamed 'those Jews' in the government for 'stealing' the election for Biden citing the "damn kids who have never worked a day in their lives and think they're so smart to have made up that mail-in voting thing" in order to overthrow their naked emperor.  

if I had gone to Mavis, I wouldn't have had to storm back out into the cold to avoid having to hear any more of it.  

when Walt presented me with bill, I looked him dead in the eye when I told him I would be paying it with my hard-working Jewish 16 year old's card, because I've been out of work for months due to his naked emperor's poor pandemic response that now has us in a third wave of hospitalizations and deaths (I was the only one in or around the shop wearing a mask, including the cop who stopped in), and that he might want to check to make sure there wasn't a Jew sitting in his office the next time he chose to spew his racist hatred.  

if I had gone to Mavis, I wouldn't now be sitting here regretting every single dollar I ever paid Walt, which is a considerable amount given the number of years I've been patronizing him, and wondering if I should simply have asked him to remove the tires, refund our money, and get Mavis to do the work (again) after all.  

would it have bothered me as much if I didn't just email my son's English teacher yesterday to address his use of the word "gyp" in a story he was telling the class?  or the woman in the fitness group who deleted me when I told her that her 'joke' about threatening to sell her children to the 'Gypsies' when they didn't do what she said wasn't in any way funny to someone like myself, whose own father was kidnapped from his Romani mother (Romani people don't steal children - in Europe, they often have their own children stolen from them by various government agencies for little to no reason other than being Roma)?  yes...yes it would.  

even as a provisional white person (acceptable to whites until they find out I'm a Romani Jew), it's a rare day that passes without some form of attack on my ethnicity/tribal affiliation/historic homeland (I think of myself more as a cultural Israeli/genetic member of the tribe of Judah than as a religious Jew).  when will this madness end?