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.
At this point there’s no point of bitching about bad pricing when playing pollo pult ima just start looking at my opp like this when I price both my blakizens yet again
2nd at the local this week
It’s insane that for the second tourney in a row, I priced both my blazikens 😂
Feeling a lot more confident with Da Pollo Pult and tbh it’s the only variation of pult I have fun playing
🚨 CAUGHT GLITCHING… NOW THE COMMUNITY IS SPLIT 😳
An alleged Pokémon VM glitcher was confronted on camera, but now collectors are debating whether the glitching or the confrontation was the bigger issue 👀
#PokeStreetz#CaughtGlitching#PokemonTCG#CardboardPolitics
Yo @playpokemon@GamingGen - The bathroom situation here is a nightmare. They just locked and closed one of them two men's rooms in the tournament hall - there's no bathrooms in the concourse that are available either.