Road racism, redux.

Rather than choosing the safe path of steering clear of all race related topics, Jim went the other way and dove right back in yesterday for another chance to sound pretty insensitive. Here's the story:

After Oscar picked up Jim and I in the afternoon, Jim was again driving and Oscar again sitting shotgun. The two were plotting our route and making sure that we didn't need to wait at my stop for anyone else, so Oscar looks at the roster and reports that we didn't need to wait, we only had to pick up Won and Theiu. At this, Jim starts laughing, repeats "Won and Theiu" a couple of times and then says, "Won and Theiu, all we need is to get a rider name Ti" and laughed at his joke. Then he continued to repeat the joke and laugh at it at least three times.

The thing is, I really don't think that Jim means to sound the way he does. I think he's pretty kind and actually pretty accepting. He certainly tolerates Kristi better than I do. However, he does say some pretty inappropriate and stupid things. Like, once we were waiting to pick someone up and my mom called me on my cell. After talking with her for a few moments I hung up and Jim said, "It sounds to me like you have a Jewish mother." To which I responded, yes I do in fact have a Jewish mother. He turned red and then tried to backpedal, saying "well you know that's an expression that people use." I'm not Oscar, and didn't really let him off the hook and instead said something like "yeah, it's an expression based on a stereotype." Nevermind the fact that, at times, the stereotype totally fits in my case.

This highlights one of the biggest problems with the van: we're not friends, but we're not strangers. It's not like on the bus or the subway, where you might see someone again and again, if you have the same commuting schedule, but unless you're super friendly you're probably not going to talk (unless it's about whether said bus/train is late or early). But, we're not really friends either. I may know people's names, job titles and what agency they work for, but that's about it. However, we see each other so often that we often behave like we're closer than we really are.