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.
Wemby smashed his head into the hardwood and did whatever he can to play again ASAP. Ant legs nearly snapped in pieces and he doing whatever he can to play ASAP. Say what you want about this generation of hoopers but these young guys understand it man
The Bible spends far more time on poverty, greed, and personal conduct than it does on homosexuality. Yet some people center everything on that one topic because punching down on marginalized people doesn't take courage. It's actually cowardice.
It’s so crazy how yall get so loud when it’s speaking about gays silent as hell when it’s about migrants and children getting raped and killing of children
Coach says the fish Zac Brown caught was the best he's ever had, but he also said, “Jack and Jill” was a great movie during “South Pacific” so I don’t know what to believe. #Survivor50
Better question is how are the two in conversation with each other? They both said the same thing, but from two different vantage points. And they were both EXCEPTIONAL pieces of performance art.