The drive was cut short by a 15 year old water pump, which has now been repaired. My abortive adventure to North-Central Washington was ended by an extended ride in a tow truck and listening an ad libitum monologue by the driver of same in which he extensively digressed on his personal work-ethic and the lack of same exhibited by the various and sundry minorities which infest his God-fearing American hometown. Attempts at entering a discussion concerning the Jewish people controlling America were avoided by the simple expedient of Your Humble Correspondent pretending to nap.
I briefly considered interrupting him and requesting silence, but as I wished to have myself and my disabled vehicle returned to my hometown utilizing his oddly dilapidated truck (odd in the sense that such a paragon of protestant work-ethic and old-fashioned American exceptionalism would allow his non-too-new and none-too-well-maintained vehicle to achieve such a sorry state). More than once I was certain that another tow truck would have to be summoned in order to get the job done. I whiled away the time spent in the confines of said tow truck conducting a gedankenexperiment concerning the handling characteristic of a tow truck towing a tow truck towing a disabled minivan. The results were not reassuring.
Got back home late, irritated the driver of tow truck to no end by not offering a gratuity on top of the fee paid to him by my insurance company. Considerable pissiness ensued followed by a greater than necessary use of force in unhooking minivan from aforementioned tow truck. Fortunately, my loathing of said vehicle allowed me to ignore scratches in plastic bumper caused by extended, poverty-related hissy fit.
The hissy fit came to a head when driver noted that the garage where we dropped off the bore bilingual signage and a name which suggested an owner with a Hispanic heritage. I found this odd, since all of our earlier interactions did not suggest a marked tendency toward critical thinking. When I assured him this was in fact true and complimenting him profusely on his deductions, he became threatening. Luckily, his deductive reasoning again kicked into high gear and he correctly assessed the probability of a fifty-year old man weighing around 140 pounds and topping out at around 5"-8" inflicting significant harm on a sixty-year old at 2 meters and on the high side of 150 kilos.
Why I am relaying this comedy of errors is to reflect upon the idea of American Exceptionalism expounded by the driver of this ship of fools. The belief system that being born in a country somehow confers a greater worth than those born elsewhere is bizarre to me.
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