💙 OFFICER DOWN 💙
Today, Texas DPS Trooper Sergio Romero was killed in the line of duty near Childress in a vehicle accident.
Trooper Romero leaves behind his wife, two young children, and a law enforcement family that is mourning an unimaginable loss.
We stand with his loved ones and our brothers and sisters at the @TxDPS.
Rest easy, Trooper Romero. Your watch is over.
#TMPA #OfficerDown #TexasLawEnforcement
After Japan battled the Netherlands to a 2-2 draw, the Japanese fans stayed behind and cleaned up every single piece of trash from their section at Dallas Stadium after the game.
If you are going to get Dad a tie this Father’s Day, make it one of these.
https://t.co/JbMhjoeO1x
If ties are not his thing, you’ll find something that is on this year’s Father’s Day Gear Guide.
https://t.co/RFVzZnkbFo
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.
USA. A diner. The waitress asked me how I want my eggs, and my mind went completely blank.
"How do you want your eggs, hon?"
Want. How do I WANT them. No one has ever asked me this. In my land, the egg arrives as the cook decrees, and you thank the egg, the cook, and your ancestors, in that order.
"Scrambled? Over easy? Sunny side up?" she offered, gently, the way one talks a man down from a roof.
The terms did not help. Over easy — over WHAT, easily? Easy for whom? Sunny side up — these people have named an egg after the dawn. Who does that. I needed time.
I have chosen battlefields faster than I chose those eggs.
She refilled my coffee and said she'd come back. It was the second refill. I had been deciding for nine minutes.
The man on the next stool leaned over. "Just say over easy, man. You can't go wrong."
"And if I CAN go wrong?"
"...it's eggs, buddy."
It's eggs. Eight hundred years of my family training itself to want nothing, and this man dismissed all of it with a fork in his hand. He was right. I will never tell him.
"Sunny side up," I declared, with the weight of a man choosing a path for life. "I will face the sun."
"You got it, hon."
The eggs came. Two small suns on a white plate, looking up at me. Golden. Ridiculous. Exactly what I wanted.
So THAT is what wanting feels like. I had to cross an ocean and hold up a breakfast line to learn it.
The man on the next stool got his check and left. "Good choice," he said.
I have never been more proud of anything.
A man does not ask the eggs to be simple. He only becomes a man who knows what he wants.
Tomorrow: over easy. I am almost ready.
FL police use A.I. to identify a vehicle theft suspect from surveillance video. Based on an "85% match" they arrest and charge Jalil Richardson. He spends 3 months in jail. He loses his job, his home, and custody of his kids.
Richardson lives in N.C.
He's never been to Florida. And his timesheet shows him at work at the time of the crime. No one checked before charging him. https://t.co/2AcQYwq30f