10. Some Things Considered

          “Get in! We’re late!” I snapped.

          “And what do you think I’m doing?” Thad barked, pulling himself into the car, grumbling.

          I started it up and backed out of the drive with a huff.

          We drove silently for a moment before I snapped, “You could have been ready on time.”

          “Oh, so now it’s my fault? You didn’t even tell me we had to go to this stupid formal work thing till like an hour ago…”

          “No, I told you on Tuesday, I just reminded you two hours ago. If you would write things down like a normal person…”

          “You never told me anything about this before one hour ago.”

          “Two hours ago.”

          “Whatever.” He looked away. 

          We rolled up to a light to wait in line, both breathing heavily. I had told him Tuesday.

          I turned on the radio to the dulcet tones of NPR.

          “Two hundred were killed in Fallujah today,” the announcer man said. “Most were civilians…” 

          Thad sighed loudly.

          I tried to ignore him, focusing on the dark street ahead.

          “Meanwhile in Mogadishu,” the announcer continued, “thousands were left homeless when bombs destroyed an entire section of a neighborhood…”

          Thad signed again, this time much more melodramatically.

          “Yes?” I asked, brows pitched. 

          “You know you only listen to NPR so you can tell people you do.”

          “What? I do not.” At that moment I realized my fault: I should not have snapped at him as we were getting in the car: he was now mad and was going to take it out on me until I could get the upper hand back and whip him back into place. This was my punishment and I had to take it. But I had to route him away from this unpleasantness before I stuck him in front of all of my colleagues, as that would be pure unadulterated disaster.

           “Yesterday you mentioned something about NPR to the Asian checker at Homeland and then began lecturing loudly on the oppression of Chinese artists in Shanghai.”

          “She brought it up, and I wasn’t lecturing. We were having a discussion.”

          “Really, Michael? The Korean grocery store checker brought up the oppression of Chinese artists randomly in conversation?”

          “Well, she asked me about the price of the Bok Choy, and I said I had heard a recipe for it on NPR and that seemed like a good lead in to the Shanghai story. And I’m pretty sure she’s Chinese.”

“No, she’s Korean.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I asked her last year…”

“You asked her about her nationality? You don’t think that’s a bit rude.”

“Oh, and how is that rude?” Thad scoffed. “I was checking out, I think with cat food, and I mentioned Charlotte Bronte, and she said something about her cat and then her Mom ‘back home,’ and I asked where she was from and she said ‘Korea.’ So there. It wasn’t rude at all, it was just conversational.” 

“Well, there’s my point exactly. I don’t think you are anyone to say anything to me about not talking to strangers, since obviously you will talk to anyone about anything at anytime. Remember that girl in the drive through window at Arby’s that you engaged about her hair color, and then we had to sit and pretend to be interested in her theories behind mobile home décor for, like, fifteen minutes as they cooked our fries? Hum?” 

          “She had pretty hair. It was the color of woven straw. And I thought she should know that. Plus my comment made her day, you could just tell that. And at least I wasn’t showing off trying to align myself with the wrong nationality by bringing up Taiwanese shadow puppet players.”

          We both were silent.

          The news went off and music began to play.  The announcer interrupted with, “And later tonight we'll have a soupcon of bluegrassy jazz, from the Creole jazz master herself…”
           I turned it up, just to annoy Thad. 

          “They only play that kind of music on NPR to make fun of real music.” He reached over to turn the radio back down. “They play this highfalutin stuff just to let you know that the actual music you really like is crap, because it’s not, like, Chilean flute music or an opera composed solely of monastic chanting in Swiss.”

          “Swiss in not a language.”

          “’Swiss is not a language’” Thad mocked viciously. 

          We were silent as cars sped past, we taking a left at a busy intersection. 

From the radio, a nasally sounding man began speaking professorially on the economy, “And if the tax cuts are not made permanent, the GDP of the US will surely continue to fail…”

          “It really is just a channel that tells you what Jews in New York think.” Thad said pointedly.

          I knew he was just trying to get my goat, but I had to respond.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to say that,” I sighed.

“Why? It would offend all of our Jewish friends? We have no Jewish friends. We’re in Oklahoma. There are no Jews.”

“There are Jews here, just not many. There’s a lady in the Communications Department, Ruth.” I said with a wag of my finger. “She’s Jewish, I think. Or maybe it’s just her name. Something O-witz. So maybe she’s married into it, but anyway, you’re not supposed to say it.”

“But you have to agree I’m right, it’s just an entire channel about what Jews in New York think, and I’m not saying that’s bad, I’m just stating the obvious. What’s that one show, the one where the two Jews named Ira talk about cars? I have never even met anyone named ‘Ira.’”

          “Car Talk.”

          “Exactly! That’s my point! Do they even drive cars up there? Shouldn’t it be ‘Subway Talk’? I mean, if you want to know about cars you should ask a big fat Midwestern to tell you about his Ford truck. Now that’d be a car talk.”

“You know New Yorkers drive cars too.”

“You mean ‘Jews drive cars too’?

“Please quit saying that.”

          “What, Mr. PC-college-sanctimonious? I can’t ask an Asian if she’s Asian and now I can’t even say ‘Jew?’”

“Stop it!”

“How come Jon Stewart can talk about being Jewish, but I can’t talk about him being Jewish? Huh?”

I threw on the breaks at another light. “Look, it’s for the same reason that I can make fun of you for being an imbecile but no one else can.”

“Ha ha,” he deadpanned. “You only listen to this highbrow crap because you think it makes you seem smart.”

“And you don’t like it because it makes you feel left out of the intelligentsia stratosphere.   

“Oh, blah, blah, blah. Did you learn all of those big words from NPR, Mr. Fancy-Pants? Jesus.” Thad said it dejected, his feelings now clearly hurt.

 “Sorry,” I said softly upon seeing his down turned eyes.  

Mentally scanning my options, I realized I quickly had to do damage control. I was already forcing him to go to a formal work event he did not want to go to, argued with him about the radio, and now had made fun of his intelligence-twice- to the point where his feelings were now hurt. If my estimations of his body language and huffing were correct, he was about one more insult away from demanding to be taken back home. I had to act fast, as by the ratcheting up of his finger tapping I could tell he wanted-or needed-a cigarette badly. 

Flipping through the CDs I pulled out one and held it up. “How about Britney Spears?”

He just nodded. We needed Britney to break the tension, and we needed her fast. The CD slid in and dance music suddenly replaced the distinguished British woman talking about genital mutilation in Africa. 

We sat in silence as Ms. Spears began to bump and grind her way into our heads in an orgy of mindlessness. Thad seemed happy, and for that I breathed a sigh of relief.

As we neared the restaurant, he leaned over and turned down the music and smiled, “Well , this should be fun. I can’t wait to talk to all of your work people, and see if any of them are, I don’t know…Chinese or Jews, or Jewish Chinese...” 

The daemonic sparkle in his eye terrified me.