INTROVERTS UNITE! AND LET US TURN OFF THE TEEVEE, THERE'S SPORTS ON

When the bus isn't packed with very important people from the Law Offices in the Embarcadero Center, Cantonese grammar school children read. There were six of them within my field of vision doing so, sitting or standing quietly by themselves, intently absorbing the texts in front of them. Fiction, not schoolbooks. The seventh, who was not reading, was overloaded with books and stood by the back door. Also literate, but arms too full to read.
It's so unlike most non-Chinese kids as to almost be un-American.
I'm unfortunately used to other ethnicities acting rowdy.
Or screaming their darned fool heads off.
It is very refreshing.


WE ARE NOT ANTI-SOCIAL, WE'RE DOING SOMETHING ELSE!

My apartment mate, at an earlier point in her life, was a Cantonese grammar school kid. She still reads. Often, when I return in the evening, I do not realize that she is home, because the apartment is silent. It isn't until she leaves her room to go to the bathroom, or the phone rings and when I answer it's her boyfriend asking if she is in -- don't know, let me go check -- that I realize that she has been in her room all along, engrossed in printed material.

I really doubt that many White People still read. Conversations recently indicate that some Caucasians are blitheringly ignorant of everything we take for granted, or quite unaware of anything outside their own narrow field of experience.
Including, very unfortunately, spelling.
Plus punctualization and capitalization.

Naturally, most White People text. And glance at Facebook. And watch sports or reality shows. That, too, is a form of culture.
And they're very good at that.

It is good living with a person who is as free of insignificant sports and entertainment facts as myself. I relish returning home to an environment uncluttered with Foot and Baseball noise and fanship.


The only reason I know who the Warriors are is because that information has been forced upon me by savages.


I've got a humongous stack of Manga next to my bed, and a pile of novels and reference works on it, to one side. There is reading material underneath, my shelves are packed, there are stacks in every room.
Not a football t-shirt or baseball cap anywhere.
I feel rather good about this.
Superior, too.

Her room also has book cases.
They are filled.



AFTER WORD

Later this evening, the bookseller and myself will meet and share drinks. We will observe the hoi and polloi disport themselves at Broadway and Columbus, and quote from Monty Python or The Big Lebowski.
We will not applaud anyone singing Karaoke.
It's a rich full life.



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