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.
The fact that cops can take a still from a video and identity a partial tee shirt logo and track it to Etsy to find the person who set a police car on fire should tell you that it’s not that they couldn’t find your stolen property, they just don’t work for you.
Breaking: Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and executive vice president Stephen Jones have decided that Jason Garrett will not be part of the organization moving forward, a source tells @WerderEdESPN.
Born in the Ivory Coast, Prince Dorbah fled to the U.S. as a refugee; shortly afterwards his mother died.
He met a Highland Park family and they all bonded, eventually adopting him.
Now he's signed to play college football. https://t.co/3Gy9spl6FG @PatDoneyNBC5