I am, of course, speaking of the Golden Gate bus which carries me back to the city after a long day of assaulting various pudgy middle-aged male sportsfanatic cigarsmokers with whips and cattle-prods.
There was screaming, and loud obscenity.
Some team won today.
The bus contained a broad and enriching slice of humanity, all of them unique individuals, with rich inner lives.
PARAGRAPH TWO
Minor annotation, necessary for understanding why the phone conversation that caught my attention caused me to grimace:
Matterhorn: a very tall mountain in Switzerland, straddling the border with Italy, not too far from France.
Switzerland: a not-insignificant country in Western Europe, sort of centrally located, bordered by Germany in the North, Italy in the South, and France in the West. Money repositories, mountains called Alps, clockmakers, chocolatiers, and Heidi can be found there.
Sweden: a place which is not Switzerland. Sweden is known for hard rotten fish, soft rotten fish, slimy rotten fish, and semifirm rotten fish.
It's really a rather nice country, located in Scandinavia, which is in
Northern Europe. The weather is colder than Switzerland.
Gohverdomme: an exclamation frequently used by Dutchmen.
PARAGRAPH THREE
Cell-phone conversation excerpt.
"I'm on the bus on Van Ness, and you should know that there's actually a Swedish Restaurant in San Francisco!"
"You should tell them! All three of them are totally Swedish, we should take them there."
"No, I just passed it; it looks clean and very nice, and for sure it's Swedish."
"It's called Matterhorn, they have the Swedish flag on the awning."
"Yeah okay then, I'll tell them and let them decide."
"I've never had Swedish food either."
And, other than causing me to swear under my breath (gohverdomme!), it made me realize that there is a substantial overlap of stupidity, ignorance, and silliness (or rank confusion); it's a Venn diagram.
Too many Americans inhabit a Venn Diagram.
We are a Venn diagrammatic people.
Some of us are ignorant. Painfully, cripplingly, ignorant. Others are stupid, and can barely find their way out of a ripped cardboard box. And yet others are silly. Or confused. There is nothing wrong with silly, or confused, but sometimes there is nothing right about it either.
And some of us are all of the above.
Very few of us are both totally Swedish as well as Swiss.
PARAGRAPH FOUR
No, I'm not going to excuse that woman on some spurious grounds, don't be ridiculous. I'm not condemning her either. I'm just saying that that is one heck of a Venn diagram.
Gohverdomme!
THE MATTERHORN
"Matterhorn from Domhütte - 2" by Photo: chil, on Camptocamp.org
Derivative work:Zacharie Grossen - Camptocamp.org.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.
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