Our room for the coming days in Houston. I don’t even know what to say about this. This is just unreal. No words.
Huge huge thank you to JJ Watt for giving me and my friends the opportunity to stay at a place like this🙏🙏🙏
USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
@tedcruz This is one of your many, many problems senator. You’re always playing culture wars with nothing that concerns you. What have you done for your constituents in the last week? Absolutely nothing.
@EmbracingTara@CubbiesFan82@HunterBiden Smart enough to hide that you’re MAGA with imaginary “neutrality,” dumb enough to support that platform and “VoTe ThAt WaY” at the polls.
YOU DON’T KNOW HOW I VOTE.
@Republicans Yeah. We’ll see what medical emergency afflicts either her or her family in November. I’m sure it will necessitate “stepping aside for personal reasons.”