Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll suffered MICROAGGRESSION IN ABILENE. She writes:

This happened to me on my Spring road trip from the Dusty Little Village to my hometown in Minnesota. Naturally, I have been in therapy ever since. First, to recover, and second, to try to establish enough of a case for emotional distress that I can sue. Then I plan to write a book and possibly design a line of t-shirts that I can peddle. (Late, Late Middle Aged Lives Matter!) I am hoping that Gal Gadot will play me in the obligatory movie – No Hotel Chain for Old Ladies — in the unlikely event that Scarlett Johansson is unavailable.

I can’t count the number of times strangers have asked me, “Aren’t you that pert girl, Scarlett?” Or possibly, “Isn’t that shirt from Carhartt?” My hearing isn’t what it used to be.

So, what happened? Trigger warning! Get your Play-Doh!

I had driven from Van Horn, TX to Abilene, on my way to Fort Worth to stay with the friends, Heather and Bill, I referenced in my Road Food column. I am pretty sure Abilene is not part of the always-windy Panhandle. But it should have some sort of honorary status as a windy gol-darn place. The reason I didn’t go all the way to Ft. Worth, was that I was not due there until the next day and didn’t want to just show up saying, “Hey, I know you thought I was coming tomorrow, but this is your lucky day, cuz here I am already! What’s for brunch?”

Heather and Bill would have been perfectly gracious when I knocked on their door and, eventually, probably answered. But, you know, there are limits, even to a 57-year friendship. And I know for certain that Heather owns a .357 magnum and has quite a startle reflex.

I don’t actually want to mention the name of the hotel in which this travesty occurred, because – unlike leftists – I don’t want anyone to lose his or her or xer job. I love people to have jobs.

I had arrived at the hotel way too early for normal check-in. However, noticing that I was a Gold Frequent Stayer with 50 nights at the chain, the front desk clerk gave me my key and promised my room would be cleaned next. I was welcome to hang out in the lobby. I thanked her and decided to spend the time walking briskly about the property. I try to walk a minimum of an hour a day. I first tried walking around outside. The gale-force winds blew me back inside in one pass around the parking lot. Plus it had started raining. My Mama always spoke disparagingly of people who “didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.”

The hotel had a little meeting room and convention center wing attached to it. I walked the halls there. Sadly, the wind had rearranged my long pony tail into a style I call “Escaped Mental Patient.” It is possible this hairdo, combined with old jeans, Ruger shirt, and Day-Glo Aqua running shoes (on sale on Amazon because apparently no sane person wanted that color…), gave me a somewhat alarming appearance and set in motion a “Mauve” Alert. (Crazy Old Lady, Possibly Homeless except for the $300 Maui Jim shades, a birthday gift.)

The walking itself could have raised the alert from “Mauve” to “Puce”. Almost nobody in America walks any more; Walmart is filled with people in motorized carts who are simply too fat to walk. People drive half a block to our mailboxes in the DLV even when it isn’t summer.

In any event, after walking for about 30 minutes, I saw a woman from Housekeeping who had been stacking towels in a closet in the convention area, and eyeing me suspiciously, decide that enough was enough. She sprinted to the lobby and shortly thereafter, a different front desk person, a man this time, approached me and asked me – none too politely and in front of other people – if I were a registered guest.

Gifted with a dominant “Smart-Assery” Gene from birth, I almost said, “No, I live in Arizona, but I have driven 859 miles just to walk in your fine lobby.” Instead, I just politely pulled my little key card out of my jeans pocket, and said, “Of course I am. Why do you ask?” There was no apology or any explanation for their concern.

Here’s the thing: every single person involved was African-American. The first woman clerk, the skittish maid, and the gentleman who approached me.

Let us imagine for one moment what would have happened if it had been the other way around. Suppose an all-white staff had approached a small, elderly black woman walking around and asked her if she really belonged there? As Rush would say, “Katie, bar the door!”

What possible other reason could there have been for her to be queried, but raaacism? The Rev’rund Jessuh Jackson would have been there on the next flight out from whatever camera he was in front of to Abilene. CNN would have blamed Trump (#IsMyPresident) for the racist atmosphere that would have allowed such a humiliating incident to have occurred. The woman would have had free nights in perpetuity at the hotel chain (plus a scholarship to Duke University) and nobody would have been satisfied until every employee involved had lost his or her job and mandatory Diversity Training inflicted upon those who remained.

The next morning I was walking down the hall from my room to the elevator. Two maids were talking loudly, one of whom had alerted the front desk clerk to check me out. She was facing away from me, peppering her language with many “f-words” and even the “m-f-word” as her colleague tried in vain to signal her to shush. As I walked past she looked pretty startled. What if I said something to a manager about her inappropriate language? You know how us clingy Deplorables are always trying to force our morals down others’ throats.

Once again, I resisted the temptation to say, “And, Top o’ the Effin’ Mornin’ to YOU, too.” I smiled, wished God’s blessings upon them both, and sat in the breakfast area making notes for this future column.

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