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poop beetle: AJ on the 4th
7.2002
My husband's brother, AJ called to see if I was watching "Pop Goes the Fourth". I was home, flipping channels. The babies had finally conked out. I'm sorry to say we didn't celebrate. Asad was out of town and the air conditioner on the mini van was broken. It was a day of pop sickles and baths and hunkering up next to the window unit.
I knew the show AJ meant, because it had preempted both "E.R.", "Law and Order" reruns.
"You know", I tell him. I can't watch it. I'm so angry about this government . . . I just can't . . .
"Right", he says, "But Barry Manilow is on. And when Asad was younger, people used to say he looked just like him."
"Really? -I think he prefers comparisons to Al Pachino".
"I can see that", he says- "a little of both."
"So, Dear Anne", he says . . . and why he calls me that is this:- he left Pakistan to work in the United Arab Emirates- but with lot's of vacation time in Europe. It's interesting that as brothers they speak with completely different accents. Asad- a grasp on appropriate American slang, but strangely hard to pin down/ foreign & AJ all "Faulty Towers".
"So, Dear Anne . . . I just don't know what's going to happen with this country. Have you heard about WorldCom?"
And I begin to diatribe. Which I had up until recently, avoided with him. He's a paraplegic who came to America for rehabilitation after a bad car accident- learned to feed himself + got an MBA at Harvard and made good as an IT recruiter during them boom years- lost his job, like so many and is now working part time as a floor manager at Filene's Basement.
In the past I held back because I assumed he was dealing with enough ineffectual rage on his own- but in fact, he's the perfect person to share this with.
And so we're off. -A.J. taking the moderate line, "maybe everybody's right about these immigrants. I see the Russians pouring in one after the other. People are afraid to fly"
And me- "Are you kidding! The immigrants are taking care of us! Who's going to clean our bathrooms? Pick our tobacco? Act as caregivers to our old and disabled? No offense. And they. THEY complain about overcrowded apartments because there are too many cars parked on the street and the school districts have to educate too many children per household? And THOSE PEOPLE who called the board of health & all they found were three immigrants working the day shift and three working the night- and you know- YOU KNOW they'll still expect their dry cleaning by Monday and their tables bused before desert. And there's Harvard University taking over the world on the backs of beneath livable wage earners. How far do they expect an Au Bon Pain worker to commute in?"
And then a little bit about Bush's girls- in trouble again, have you noticed the weight they've packed on? And Chelsea- what a doll- but Oxford is viscous.
And AJ tells me- which I'd never heard before, the sign on the gate reads, "Learn or Leave. . . and you can't you tell, how much she does loves her dad?"
