I was eating my rye toast and poached eggs in a quaint diner in Kingston, New York, when the manager started yelling, “They’re shooting at cops now!”. And everyone in the diner turned around.
I still don’t know who was shooting at cops, but sufficed to say, it didn’t involve anyone within 500 miles of where we were.
The manager proceeded to explain that because “they” were shooting at cops, he was more than 100% behind the new immigration law in Arizona. He proceeded to say that people who tried to sneak across the border should be shot with tasers while standing in ditches full of water. He then had a few other thoughts on immigration reform, which involved working without health care, some oddball idea about taxes, and mostly, the idea of tasering as a swiss-army knife approach to politics.
For the most part, the diner’s occupants loudly agreed with the manager, lest he start electrocuting them right then and there. Two off-duty cops clapped him on the back and kind of agreed with him, but mostly took the opportunity to grumble about the Marine core.
The waitress over-enthusiastically offered her support, so did the senior citizen sitting in front of us. Their amalgamated brio didn’t seem genuine, but it didn’t seem too far off the mark either. My table was silent.
Eventually the diner emptied out, and I went up to pay the bill. The manager looked directly at me with a mixture of guilt and accusation, but he didn’t say anything. I looked back at him. The only thing I could think was, “Are you happy now that you got this off your chest?”
And I have to ask myself: am I happy now that I got it off mine?
Of course not.
