Tuesday, September 18, 2018

So much for cultural appropriation


This made me laugh out loud.

My nephew Kyle came to live with us this summer after his freshman year of college. Apparently he’s now a deputized member of the cultural-appropriation police.

He hadn’t even unpacked his massive bag of dirty laundry when he made a snide comment about the three straw hats hanging in our hallway collected during our years living in Southeast Asia.

The next day when Kyle and I were backing out of the driveway and I called out “Adios” to my neighbor, Kyle mumbled, “Appropriate much?”

But then the following Saturday, I overheard Kyle ask my wife if we had any sunscreen he could borrow. “Brenna and I are going kayaking.”

I poked my head around the corner. “Mmm. Kayaks. You mean that watercraft appropriated from the Inuit people of the Arctic region?”

Quick on his feet, Kyle recovered and retorted, “I meant to say we’re renting canoes.”

“As in the canoe that was developed by the indigenous people of North America?”

Stymied, Kyle canceled his plans. He and Brenna spent the day sitting quietly on a park bench.

The following Monday our neighbor offered Kyle 50 bucks to move a mound of dirt into his backyard. I was glad to see the boy working. But when I saw he’d helped himself to the wheelbarrow from my shed, I couldn’t help myself.

“Whatcha doing there, McFly?”

“Moving this dirt for some quick cash.”

“Using a wheelbarrow?”

“Yup.”

He continued shoveling.

“As in the one-wheeled cart invented by the Chinese?”

Kyle looked at me for a long moment as he processed this information before finally lowering the handles of the wheelbarrow.

He switched to lugging the dirt in a five-gallon bucket. It took him the rest of the afternoon. The job worked out to four dollars an hour.

The next day he was so stiff and sore, Brenna suggested they go stretch out at “Yoga in the Park.” Until I pointed out yoga is a sacred practice rooted in Hinduism.

Brenna went by herself.

My wife told me to leave the poor boy alone. But hey, as his uncle, I feel it’s my job to help him live out his passionately held core values.

There's more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Pretentiousness usually meets its match.  Life is pretty handy at arranging that.




Peter

5 comments:

Fredd said...

Poor Kyle will continue in his leftist beliefs, perhaps indefinitely. The only hope for changing his point of view is him getting a high paying job and then seeing how much of it disappears to fund the well being of others, to the detriment of the wage earner.

That changes lots of minds and hearts, but not all of them.

Jim said...

LOVE IT! I wonder if that youngster berates other ethnicities for appropriating European culture.

Uncle Lar said...

It is the nature of the human animal to observe such techniques that work for other cultures, borrow them, and make them their own. America's greatest resource is how our melting pot appropriates the best of what's out there and blends it into our own whole.
E Pluribus Unum isn't just a trite Latin phrase, it's what we are, at least until the progressive left decided to trash it all.

Andrew Smith said...

Brilliant!

Bibliotheca Servare said...

It's really biting satire, but it's almost too realistic, heh...terrifyingly so.