"Such an American"

I have a new manager at work. He used to be my former colleague he just moved here from Texas to assume the manager role. For the year and a half that I've known him, 98.5% of my interactions with him have been on the phone. The other 1.5% were when I visited him for a week in Austin. While it is nice to see him face-to-face, I am getting used to interacting with him in person. Before I would listen to the tone of his voice but now there are facial expressions and body language to interpret, which is taking up more of my bandwidth when I talk to him.

Last week, he was ranting at me about something (this was a justifiable rant, by the way) and I stopped listening to the his commotion as I was distracted by his hands. When he gets riled up, he talks with his hands.

"Huh," I thought to myself, ignoring what he was saying, "I never knew he talked with his hands so much." It was just an observation rather than a judgment. "That's interesting." Coming from an Italian family, talking with your hands is part of life. For thousands of years, Italians had different dialects and they added hand gestures so people from diverse parts of the country could better understand each other when they all gathered in Rome.

"I wonder if the same is true in India," I thought.

"Lauren," my new manager said, "You are being such an American!" With that, I snapped back to the words of the conversation. Such an American. Hmmm. Those words have been haunting me for a week, especially this morning.

Last fall, Jack and I went to the University Food Bank Auction where they sold tickets to a spring garden party where we would have the privilege of planting the rooftop summer garden that supports the Food Bank. In short, I gave the Food Bank a donation so I could plant their garden. What a bunch of fundraising geniuses! "I bet we can get the RWP* to donate money to have the opportunity to volunteer for us!" This is even better idea than the "Stuff White People Like" blog post about pick-your-own fruit.

"Such an American," came screaming through my heads as had paid for the privilege of planting onions and then tearing up cardboard scraps to add carbon to the compost bins.

* Rich White People