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.
How do the Brewers do this every year? They do it every single year. 7 guys you’ve never heard of, a fat first basemen, Christian Yelich, and the best rotation you’ve ever seen in the history of baseball. I’m sick of it!!!!!!!
Would you rather spend $200 billion to bomb Iran or…?
A: give every teacher in America a $62,500 bonus
B: provide downpayment assistance for 20 million young families
C: build 1,300 rural hospitals
just as a general rule if there are a bunch of clergy peacefully protesting in the cold and you’re the one dragging them away in cuffs, there’s a 99.9% chance you’re on the wrong side of history
it really is hard to contextualize the hubris it’s taken for americans to develop this insane relationship with medicine. for all of human history you were essentially flipping a coin on wether or not you’d see your kid turn 10
Meanwhile, Green Day, 38 years into their career, still has more monthly listeners than Charli, at her peak. Y'all kids need to sit down and learn about the world outside of you echo chambers.