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.
Nicotine (administered through a reusable vaporising device) provides the alertness, the crystalline mental acuity. Beer yings the yang, so to speak, placing you in a den of kindly feeling. But the picture isn’t complete before the Thumb navigates to a most amusing YouTube Short
“You can always spot Americans in foreign countries”
Yeah man you blend right in at Yellowstone with your child’s medium Armani Exchange shirt, skin tight capri length jorts, and Pumas
a lot of the things people say “they don’t teach you in history class” was stuff i learned in my illinois public school education. while the quality of education varies greatly across the country i really do think in some cases people just weren’t paying attention
Nathan is on CNN right now playing it totally straight and prefacing all his comments with “as a pilot…”
Wolf Blitzer has no idea what is going on and getting increasingly frustrated
The Nathan Fielder Rehearsal victory lap continues with him on CNN right now reacting to the FAA statement provided to CNN
"That's dumb. They're dumb."