Wheat People
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
es, my friends. I am still alive. I swear this pregnancy is killing my blog. As much as I want to write, I just never get to it like I used to. It didn’t help that I was laid up this weekend with horrible fibroid pain. I could barely walk. Finally, I’m better enough to travel to Oklahoma City tomorrow for work. Sounds like fun, no?
But there is one incident that I want to write about before I go to sleep. And it involves Wheat People. What the hell are Wheat People? Well, it is my crazy aunt Marsha’s term for white people. Please don’t ask me how she came up with this one. When she’s had too much champagne, anything is liable to come out of her mouth. Initially I thought she was saying Weak People, a moniker, though racist, that might emerge from the lips of a Black Power child of the 60s. But no, Wheat People it is.
Sometimes I get tired of Wheat People. Yeah, don’t remind me that I married one. And don’t remind me that on any given day I’m tired of black people, conservatives, mommy trackers, and ignorami. Everyone has a turn on my “tired of” list. But here’s what happened.
I went to the post office in little ‘ol North Wales where I live. It seems that the maternity clothes I bought online don’t fit my big sista-gurl thighs. They say that you should order your pre-pregnancy size. That’s what I did. Little did I know that my thighs disqualified me from a maternity size 14. So I was in the post office mailing them back.
The first person in line was a brother, maybe mid-40s to 50 wearing a hoodie over a baseball cap and some black jeans. He was getting a money order. The guy behind the counter gave him his money order, so he walked over to the central counter to fill out all the required information. (For those who have never gotten a money order before, it requires a lot more information that just writing a check.) Brotherman was concentrating on his money order minding his own business when the next person, the Wheat Person, was waited on. This woman was short, squat, between 50-60, with crazy-looking bleached blonde hair. She turned around and looked at brotherman like he was going to sneak up on her and shank her.
The counter guy asked her what she wanted. There was some issue with her vacation mail hold. As the counter guy headed toward the back to get her held mail, he asked her address.
“102,” she replied.
“102 what?” said counter guy.
Looking back over her shoulder again at brotherman, she turned back to counter guy and said, “102 whisper whisper.” And then she looked back at brotherman again, making sure he hadn’t written down whatever she whispered.
Now at this point, I’m starting to get really pissed off. Brotherman is minding his business filling out his money order, not even studying this woman. But she was totally studying him. You could just see the BlackManFear emanating off of her. She turned around and looked at him yet again, and I was enraged. She then decided to look to her other side, and found me glaring at her and some young Wheat Chick off in space. Then she turned to look at him again! I swear I was this close to going into my Diary of a Mad Black Woman mode and asking, “Do you have a problem with this brother?!”
Finally the counter guy comes back and they settle whatever the issue was with her mail. She turns to leave and stares at brotherman, terrified that he’s going to follow her to her car and kill her. She tried to angle her way out of the building so that she doesn’t go near him. But she keeps turning back to look at him as she’s exiting. It took all my will not to go out behind her and yell “Boo” loud enough to provoke the MI that she had nearly worked herself up into.
Brotherman eventually completed his money order form after my turn in line. He handed it back to counter guy, said thanks, and drove off in his Ford Explorer.
The thing that got to me is that I was the only one who noticed. Counter guy and Wheat Chick were oblivious to the entire incident. And brotherman was so focused on filling out his money order that he never looked up once. This meant I had no one with whom to share my rage. Except my Wheat Person husband.
The good thing about Wheatie Husband is that he gets my rage and never tries to talk me out of it. I told him that this incident reminded me of something that happened to my mother. She was walking in the parking lot of Westside Pavilion back to her car. Mom was in her 60s and using a cane. She was behind some old Wheat Person woman who, upon turning around and seeing my mother behind her, clutched her purse tightly to her side and started to walk faster. It turns out that their cars were near each other. As my mother unlocked her 5-series Benz, the woman got to her Ford Fiesta, or some such car, turned to my mother and said, “I guess you wouldn’t want to carjack my car!”
Now this was wrong on so many levels. But did she have to add insult to injury by verifying that she honestly thought that my 60 year old mother walking with a cane was going to carjack her? What the hell!
It must be so tiring to be a Wheat Person who thinks that every black or brown person is going to do them harm. But not being one, I cannot be sure. I do know that it is exhausting trying to represent for your people, when you are so often assumed to be a carjacker, thief, murderer, welfare queen, baby mutha, neck rolling, verb-splitting, sassy, stupid no-account.
I’m going to bed.