Speaking of guns…and mosqitoes

Speaking of guns… A neighbor last week, not one to gossip – she says – kept me standing in my front lawn while I was being eaten alive by terrorist mosquitoes, giving me the latest on all the neighbors. Among other complaints about the local village government, she was telling me how long it would take the police to get here on a call if there was ever an emergency. Twenty minutes, at least! (we’re still semi-rural)

“Got to have a gun to protect yourself”, she says. “Do you have a gun?”

“No”, I answer.

“But you’re from the city (implied: where all those black people live), aren’t you?”

“Yes”, I say.

“But don’t all the people there have guns to protect yourselves?”

“No”, I say.

It went on. More mosquito bites. I was thinking, I will soon die of more mosquito induced blood loss than any bullet could produce. So it seems people like her are seriously afraid of one of “those people” breaking into their homes at night and doing some bad things.

At night! That’s hilarious! I have to mention, it’s pretty dark out here, and without street lights. Often when I get home at night and out of my car, I can’t find the front door of my own house. I can’t even see the house unless someone happened to leave a light on.

The reason the police response is so slow is that there is little of the types of crime that most people irrationally fear – especially at night. Not by any virtue, particularly. There are just less people, and at night, it’s just too damn dark. The popular myth that adding more street lighting helps cut down crime is pretty silly. Somebody can’t burgle your house or murder you in the night if they can’t find you. Anyhow, if you look at the statistics, most break-ins and burglaries happen during the daytime when people are not home, and are crimes of opportunity – open garages, unlocked doors, etc.. And, statistically out here, the crimes are not committed by people with dark skin – say, darker than white.

Anyhow, I thought it was time to mention the “R” word. Not in an accusatory fashion, but like, “you know, that sounds kind of racist, and if I didn’t know you better and what a good Christian person you were…”

But truly, nobody here uses the “N” word – no racism out here, by golly! All good Christian folk. No, we just call them “blacks”. All 2.5 of them that live in these parts. Well actually, it’s usually “those blacks” — or “the blacks”.

As opposed to…?

Finally, it looked like she was headed over to not gossip with another neighbor. But she had one more question.

“I heard from [another neighbor] that you play the violin.”

“Yes”, I said.

“Can I ask you kind of an impertinent question?”

“Sure”, I said, “ask away”.

“Are you Jewish?”

“Well, no”, I said. “Why do you ask”?

(This was re-posted from an old blog  from last year)

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 23rd, 2009 at 10:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.