Chapter 2: Keep Your Hands to Yourself

Tim does this thing when he wants me to shut up. Like, if we’re in public and he thinks I’m talking too much. It’s when he thinks I’m talking too much.

            Did you see The Shining? Do you remember how the creepy little kid used his index finger to talk, bending it at the knuckle? Redrum?

            That’s what Tim does.

            If he thinks I’m over-explaining or going overboard, there’s the redrum signal.

            The last time he did it was about three days ago on the last day of our vacation in New England. He took us to this New Hampshire breakfast spot and we decided we’d all eat like pigs in order to avoid any more meals prior to our afternoon flight out of Boston. It was just the four of us—husband, wife, two kids. This was a childhood favorite of his, and I couldn’t get over the fact that he grew up in this strange idyllic landscape of adorable, huge homes and town squares with bandstands and crazy white churches with pointy steeples. I mean, Really?

            The pancake of the day was strawberry.

            People ordered corned beef hash. (Couldn’t believe it! Hash!)

            Strawberry and cream cheese-stuffed French Toast. (Yum!)

            Eggs of all kind. (With gauche ketchup on them!)

            When it was my turn to order, I leaned forward and posed a few questions, “How big are the pancakes? If I order two, is it too much or will it be too few?” Tim watched me from behind his laminated menu, a little sticky with maple. Over the course of the week, Tim had called me a City Slicker a billion times. Every time I stepped into the woods and observed something in nature, he said, “You’re like Josh Lyman outside of the Big City.” The West Wing? There’s a classic episode in which Josh equates getting stuck in a small town to “roughing it.” I continued, “Is it possible for me to get one strawberry pancake, and one blueberry pancake?”

            “Like a custom stack?” The server asked.

            I guess. “Yes? Just one of each.”

            “Well, you can order one pancake. So you want one strawberry and one blueberry?” She hovered over her order pad.

            “Yes. But on the same plate, right?”

            Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tim with the finger. Redrum, redrum.

            Seriously? That’s crazy. I kept talking, “Yeah, I’ll have that. And coffee with cream, no sugar. And a glass of water. Thank you.”

            Was that so complicated?

            “What, is that another City Slicker thing?” I asked him when it was just the four of us.

            “No. It’s a money thing. Rich people demand their needs are met.”

            So I was being accused of elitism, of snobbery, of classism. “That’s absurd. You should articulate your desires more. You’re paying.” I gave him a look. “It’s okay to be specific.”

            “I am specific. When I open the menu and look at the choices they offer, I make my specific decision by picking one.” We continued for a bit. Tim concluded, “Rich people are used to getting what they want. They expect people to wait on them.”

            I shrugged him off.

            This is connected to an old and amusing conversation we like to have on White Trash. I thought now might be a good time to slip in a little chapter on more class consciousness. Having emerged from my childhood awareness of the haves and have-nots, I eventually landed in adulthood, married to the whitest man in the world. That’s how I’d put it. He eats too much mayo. He’s a little too excited about Christmas. He doesn’t have a lot of experience with brie or Botticelli.

            He’d put it differently. He’d say, “I’m White Trash.”

            (I’m hesitant to write this because Tim’s family might read it, and . . . Do they feel the same way? Do they know Tim says this stuff? How do they feel about that?)

            Well, for the record, I disagree with Tim. His parents have three kids, and all three of them went to college. Right there, not White Trash. But there are two questions that are of nonstop interest to us:

            What exactly is White Trash?

            We love that one. I love that one. Can we get to the heart of White Trash?

            And is it a racist thing to say?

            That’s another big favorite. I say yes. Tim says no. He gives me some line like this: “It’s okay for ne to use it since I am White Trash.”

            I’m always a little happy when different libs give me the go ahead to talk about White Trash. I get a little happy when friends tell me it’s not racist and I can opine on White Trash to my heart’s content. With its nebulous definition, its shifty meanings. Is a redneck the same thing? Trailer Trash! Walmart! Is White Trash about one’s teeth? About one’s front yard? Who gets to define it?

            Do I?

            All I know for sure is that I’m not White Trash.

            Because I have no problem saying that I want one strawberry and one blueberry pancake.

            And this is a chapter on our new class consciousness.