So, first off, I live in like one of the whitest corners of California: Plumas County the northeastern corner of the state. White people who are on welfare vote Republican here. Yeah, no shit. White people up here believe that the United Nations is coming for their ranches and are going to force them to go live in the Castro with gay people and the Mission with Mexicans (they don’t know that there are Central Americans and white guys with too much facial hair and Pabst Blue Ribbon there too). Lately since the Tea Party isn’t new anymore, they’ve all switched to flying the green and yellow flag of the ‘State of Jefferson’ –a movement of southern Oregon and northern California Anglos who don’t like to pay taxes but use government services and think that somehow this area could become a 51st state without any infrastructure or industry except meth labs and pot farms. This is often where dull tools get put in the shed.
They aren’t all like this of course. But I happen to be taking my kids—a couple of the few Mexican-American kids in the area—to the pool in Taylorsville, CA and you can’t even sit at the pool up here without hearing about the UN coming in with trucks to take property away from ranchers and someone taking our guns from us and everyone forcing us not to say the ‘N’-word. That political correctness is evil, they say. I hate to tell them that the term political correctness hasn’t been relevant since Glen Beck went off the air and Rush Limbaugh finished his first stint in rehab.
It’s weird in northern California. Like we do have an ingrained live and let live mentality, which means we are slow to call the cops and people light up their joints like it’s nothing. It means I always eat fresh vegetables and fruit and breathe fresh air and I’m able to go in on killing a cow and we split the beef in fourths and eat all winter. It means I’m really close to the water source (you know we’ll fight you for water and have a history of blowing shit up in small town California [see Owens Valley]. It means we breathe the only air in California that doesn’t hurt your lungs and can make you dizzy it’s so pure.
But it also means I hear some stupid shit at the pool.
We are a five-hour drive from San Francisco. I lived there for seven years. It’s still my city to go to if I want to buy a book or a cocktail or look at art that’s meant to say something instead of just matching the couch. I love this corner of the world for its quirkiness but I admit wanting to throw a chancla or two at the white mothers at this pool who meet the world with an idea that the world is out to get them.
So far they’ve told my kids erroneous information on what primary elections for, that the UN has taken over American liberties, and I think somewhere in there Obama became the anti-Christ.
We just don’t think this way and we certainly don’t say these things in public. I mean, manners, hello.
My kids know they will be lectured on the way home. They can feel it coming on.
Aye, don’t listen to that mom at the pool. First of all, she had no fashion sense whatsoever and secondly, she’s wrong!
I can feel their eyes start to roll. Mom, shush! Someone will hear you!
I keep as quiet as I can at the pool. I just smile. I’m wearing a polka dot two-piece plus size retro style bathing suit with a flower in my hair. I swam 20 laps like a bad ass and then dried off and got out my lipstick and my laptop. The crazy conspiracy theory moms are swimming in mix-matched swimwear. Just sayin’.
So that’s where I am and where Throwing Chanclas is– at the pool and spying on your ill-informed ass and then blogging about it.
Throwing Chanclas 