Now you know why one of the great American vacation dreams is to drive across our entire country. I don’t think Euros can get the romantic allure of “road trip” until you come here and experience the vastness and variety for yourself. “From sea to shining sea” ain’t no joke.
You can’t write an essay without ChatGPT? Well, I’m an elder millennial and, on the eve of the due date in the Land Before Autosave, sometimes Word would freeze and we would write that essay AGAIN.
I'LL SAY IT AGAIN:
IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL to charge a "convenience fee" for paying a bill online. The convenience is for the company. The fee is for you.
you’ll ask chatgpt for a pickle recipe and it will hit you with “one thing i often do” and “i've never found this necessary.” brother you are a large language model. you have never pickled a cucumber in your life.
It does feel like there ought to have been a 4th of July set Charlie Brown special where the other kids call him unpatriotic for thinking fireworks are stupid, Linus for some reason has advanced knowledge of the Constitution, and Snoopy hits the Nixon victory pose
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.