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.
I imagine being in the trump administration is like:
yayyy let’s pass the “make everyone’s life worse” bill! its only goal is to make everyone’s life worse ❤️ we are very smart!!
Rolling up to the White House to cheer on the president destroying the agency that makes sure kids in wheelchairs have equal access to education is wild
Really is a tough call.
On one hand - every Nobel prize winning economist is adamantly stating that Harris has a significantly better economic plan
But on the other hand - the dumbest people I’ve ever interacted with say Trump is a good businessman
Quite the dilemma
I apologize in advance if this applies to you, but I sincerely believe that if you are entertained by this child and his extended universe you are of an objectively lower mental status than me, something akin to a sea urchin or maybe a mussel