Bank Shot

Interestingly, I was nearly dis-invited to Thanksgiving this year for allegedly referring to a relative as being a redneck.
To get the full picture, we need to go back a year. My stepmom's brother Gale had just built himself a gorgeous place out in Lyons, along the Santiam river. He had the whole fam-damnly over; all these people I was related to by marriage, but had never met. I had a great damn time.
The older generation was rather solidly conservative, the younger, rather solidly liberal. They got on well, as people from the same family and same society should. They listened to each other, rather than trying to shout each other down, as one might suspect they would, listening to "talk" radio.
At one point, the patriarch (Gale) said something along the lines of, "Remember what Dad always told us: never forget you're a Holfert." This being the family's last name.
After a brief silence, I said, "Well yeah; if you forget your own last name, then you really look stupid." They all laughed.
What I apparently did happened on my birthday, a month or less later. My stepmom, my dad and I were getting some lunch at Jake's Famous Crawfish, and I (allegedly) referred to her brother as a "redneck".
Now, I don't remember doing this, but if I did, it certainly wouldn't be an insult.
As a small town punk rocker, rednecks were the enemy. They were the people who wanted to beat me up because I looked funny, and as all true cowards do, this was never man to man; it was always seven of them, or so. I spent a lot of my time running in those days; only an asshole sticks around with odds like that.
But I am no longer a teenager, nor a punk, to put it lightly. So to hear this was weird. Even weirder; Gale is a redneck. Had I called him one, he would have taken it as a badge of honor. He moved up to Alaska because he preferred the company of the land to the company of people: the true definition of redneck, if you ask me. And Alaska is where true rednecks go, if you ask me also. After his wife died, he moved back down here.
Later, when I was a hippie to most people's eyes (well, I had hair down to my ass, anyway), I was camping on my step-uncle's (other side of the family, the Jewish Redneck side...More on that later) property with my girlfriend and daughter, put to sleep each night by the coyotes.
One night, someone had a runny nose, so I came inside to get some Kleenex. I took a couple, and my step-uncle said, "Take the whole box."
I said that I only needed a couple tissues, and he got all pissy. "Take the whole damn box!"
I pointed out again that I didn't need the whole damn box, a couple tissues were all I needed, really, and he chooses to deal with this inflammatory statement by saying, "You just don't like rednecks, do you?"
At that point I started laughing. I said, "Sam, I don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm gonna take this here box, go back to the tent now. You have a good night, okay?"
Hell, I don't have a problem with rednecks: I like them better than yer average hipster around here, certainly. I have a problem with anyone when they're being childish, rural or urban, but I don't engage in categorical dismissals. I think there's a lot of people-some of them being rednecks-who wouldn't think of giving me the benefit of the doubt the way I do them, but that's because I'm a goddamn saint, as we all know. Liberal, conservative, urban, rural, I love 'em all. I hate assholes.
So my stepmom and I talked this morning. After reiterating that I had no recollection of having done so, I apologized if my calling her brother a redneck had caused any bad feelings. She started off her professional life as a teacher, and went into Teacher Voice right after this.
"I think there's a lot of things that we can say about our own families that we get defensive about if other people say them," she said.
"The same is true of nationalities," I said.
My friend who went to France for a while talked of being cornered at dinner parties and being pressured to explain U.S. foreign policy, which he definitely had no role in crafting. Then, there's what happened to David Sedaris:
"Like me, my American friends are sometimes called upon to defend their country, usually at dinner parties where everyone's had a bit too much to drink. The United States will have done something the French don't like, and people will behave as though it's all my fault. I'm always taken off guard when a hostess accuses me of unfairly taxing her beef. Wait a minute, I think, Did I do that? Whenever my government refuses to sign a treaty or decides to throw its weight around in NATO, I become not an American citizen but, rather, America itself, all fifty states and Puerto Rico sitting at the table with gravy on my chin."
And I realized that if I ever go anywhere other than North America, this might happen to me, too. With my crap language skills, I might not be able to say, "But in my homeland, people like me are decidedly the minority...And Mr. Bush didn't call me to ask about invading Iraq anyway. Neither did Mr. Clinton." The irony would be rich.
This sort of happened to me when I went to Bermuda. A fifteen year old, I wasn't terribly concerned with politics, but I watched the news, and knew that we were bombing Libya that particular week. Wherever I went, nothing but hard looks. Surely they knew, right? But no.
And note the 'we' in that above sentence. I wasn't bombing a damn thing, but 'we' were...This opens up nothing but possibility for more discussion. When an Iranian living in the U.S. gets a brick through their window for being Iranian, doesn't even the most childish of jingo stop to ask themselves: "Well, if they actually liked Iran, why are they living in Fort Worth?"
But you know what happens next-"If they live here, they want to bring down this, the greatest nation what ever was," and feel fine in their racism.
No; chances are if they're here, they had to flee Iran when the religious nuts took over, and are no doubt shaking their heads bitterly at the fact that the religious nuts are more and more in charge here, too.
In any case, I'm invited to Thanksgiving again. Last year, I taught a young boy there to shoot pool. There was a pool table out in the garage, and I felt like shootin' stick. The kid was just tired of being ignored by the adults. I showed him a few tricks.
His mom came in at some point and told me that I didn't need to spend all that time putting up with her son if I didn't want to. I didn't bother saying that her kid provided better conversation than a lot of the adults at the party; "He's fine," I said. Then I drank some more whiskey and attempted to teach him how to do a bank shot.