The title of this post relates to the situation in which I am occasionally scolded by the lord and master of this household for my hygienic practice. Some day, if he ain’t careful, he’ll find himself shuffling around in Kleenex boxes worrying about every germ floating in space and potentially landing on his flesh.

The boy is clean. And, undoubtedly, I should be showering right now instead of writing.

The funniest part about it to me today is I felt a million miles away from my base-line life, the comfort zone of childhood, the known, the assumptions, my roots, all because of a conversation about showering.

Actually, the conversation was kind of a real-life coda to an abstract discussion at a meeting I was in today. At the meeting, someone was looking for correction or clarification in a document that referenced “minorities.” Here, where I now live, so-called minorities are the majority, and it is not a matter of political correctness but accuracy to mind tone and language.

Back where I come from, and most certainly in my plain vanilla suburb, where Jon Feldman spoke to the entire school about Jewish tradition and of the three Asian children I knew, two had the last name Goldman and one that of Twomey, minority was a statistical truth. It’s a little weird some times to wrap your head around the sort of artifice of that lily white living, drop what you learned and live in the real world.

So, in the real world of the Left Coast, where so many people are from somewhere else, I joked about the “American” obsession with showers with a woman who came from India as a kid and the ultimate test of my xenophobia, a Yankees fan, while mentioning my ethnically Chinese man. How many fucking miles of psyche is that set up from south suburban Boston?

Oh, and once again, I attended a staff-wide meeting that wasn’t laden with empty bullshit and posture. It was long and painful to be sure, as is the nature of meetings, and I did drift off into a place where white lint contrasting against my black T-shirt took on mystical properties holding my interest in its wonder. But it wasn’t prolonged with gas.

These people really are quite fucked up and living in a bizarro, opposite world to the one in which I dwelled.

That bizaroo effect also explains the compliment I received today. Apparently, in my three-month tenure of employ, some of the folks have noticed little ol’ me. The compliment specifically alluded to a little bit of tact, good naure and such like lubricants that would give the appearance of social deftness.

Seriously, me, diplomat, tact, cool-like and taking it easy and getting along. Little chipper, happy monkey of helping out. Really makes me want to tell some people I used to know to go fuck themselves on the steel pole of my good will.