Pocket Texan

I got into Cape Town on a Tuesday night after two days of travel and an impromptu overnight in DC, occasioned by a mechanical problem with my flight which led to missing the London connection. I shared my flight to Johannesburg with a clutch of undergrads going to a medical conference, including that one girl, you know the one, loud and over-gesticulating and DON'T YOU KNOW YOU SOUND LIKE A HOWLER MONKEY, YOU SHREWISH HARPY?! On the other hand, I caught up on several romantic comedies I'd missed, a rerun of "House," and "Blood Diamond" (you were right, Mijha, it was mostly about the relationship between Leo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connely. Your instincts were sure and true.) I love international flights.

My cabbie from the airport was colored--that is an official designation for people in South Africa who are neither all black nor all white, children, not a derogatory term. (Older friends, if this blog is didactic at times, it's because I have some fifth-grade readers.) So mixed-race, Indian, Asian, they're all colored. My cabbie was undone, totally flabbergasted, that I was from Texas. Apparently I am too small to be a Texan. All the ones he's driven, including the 300-pound woman who broke his seat in November, have been grotesquely obese. It's the Texas beef, he opined, so I must be eating Texas celery. He was full of the funny, this guy. "Smallest Texan I ever drive," he kept saying. Also, he accurately surmised that I am a Democrat because of my cargo pants and T-shirt. "Republicans, they come in white shirts and black shoes and lots of money, but we see khaki, we know you are Democrat and you are OK." Apparently in South Africa at least, Democrats are still the party of the common man. Also, a joke courtesy of the cabbie: what's the difference between South Africans and Americans? Answer: South Africans were raised in the bush and Americans are run by one. He'll be here all week, folks, try the veal.

He did say something I found interesting: he said you can immediately tell the difference betwen Europeans and Americans. "Americans, you are looking outward," he said, which I figured out meant that we look up and out at the world. "You are walking boldly." He grinned. "Like you own the world." And he said we smile a lot. Grinning idiot has long been the rap Americans get, but you know, there are worse things to be known for then being friendly and confident.