because of the gelid arctic air, it felt like minus two yesterday morning even if it was officially only in the 'teens. and when one of my jamaican workfellows graciously volunteered to drop me off from work, i readily accepted her offer.
as my wont--that if the weather's fine--i would usually be in my toady pinoy s.o.p.(feel free to exchange pinoy with immigrant; would still read fine). i would have profusely thanked her for flinging along my way this act of undeserved sweet charity (sniffle, sniffle, sniffle), refused flatly the offer, and with histrionics strangely spliced in genes of timid immigrants, feigned embarrassment as to being singled out for the favor.
oh no, but not this time.
as we plowed on along the freshly salted road out of our hospital's parking lot, my phone started to go off. it was one of those totally unnecessary text messages from friends back home that oddly enough i look forward to receiving.
this one from a lady friend who decided to quit work after her husband got promoted assistant vice president of the company they both first spotted each other's charms.
she exhorted me to disregard my humanly need to sleep (this after working throughout the previous freezing new york night) so that i can just "wats internt brodcst of fpj burial." riveting.
clearly, my co-worker was baffled with what i was doing after i started keying in furiously my response. i told him i was texting.
"text what?" she shot back.
now, if you are an immigrant from a third world country (yup, that's right, philippines, you pinoy denial queens) that hardly merits any blip at all in the national public consciousness, there are but few chances in your stay here in this country as a second class citizen where you would feel good, i mean too-big-for-one's-breeches good, about yourself. this was one of them, or so i thought.
so i started to launch my grand explanation of how sms (short message service) works because this was the preamble to my grander claim that--tadada--the country, make that the poor, insignificant country, that i come from is anointed--well, perhaps by its very own citizens--as the text capital of the world. top that us of a.
"oh ya, them take too much time, ya know?" she said as she veered right towards the exit ramp nearest my place.
"but it's cheaper," i shot back. "but ya can squeeze in more things to say if ya just kal them," she answered.
i was stumped. i had no clue as to how to get right back to my message that my country is a whole lot better than anybody else's just because pinoys are so dam gud @ txtng. hell, we even ushered this verb--texting--right into the new lexicon of the century. so we should be darn better, right?
so i clammed up (which i have belatedly discovered in life to be always a good thing for my personality).
and there we were, two poor immigrants, from two hard up island nations, making sense of the insane morning rush, making choices that we think are best for our piffling existence here in the land of supersized promises and value meal realities.
as her car made a pell-mell screech in front of my building, i thought maybe the pinoys are just text mad because we are indeed a tactile culture. we just love touching. we just love the feeling of feeling something. anything tangible, corporeal must be infinitely preferrable to us than say stuff heard, spoken, or sung. maybe in our hierarchy of senses, the perception derived from touch supersedes any of the other (is it five or six?) senses. we are not so much as the vaunted oral society that ours is reputed to be as much as we are really a touchy feely one.
then i thanked her profusely, and harnessing the peculiar histrionics somehow spliced in my genes, i feigned embarrassment for being singled out this favor.
"oh thank you, thank you, thank you so much," i gushed.
she didn't say you're welcome but instead she just hugged me. the hug, abrupt and tight. and flat out unfeigned.
i slinked away from her warm hug into the lashing early morning frost curiously feeling shamed.