Sunday, August 24, 2003

It's Not Nice to Stare...


Jorgh and I were going home last night on the metro at about 11:00 p.m. from his place, having done the laundry (for free... ^_^ ) over there and after a wonderfully home-made supper. Except it wasn't made at home, but at a restaurant (Eurosnack). And it wasn't so wonderful because there was a fry with eyes on it. All deep-fried and scary.

Anyway, I've been in Montreal for four years now, going on my fifth year, and I must say that I find people in Montreal to look more or less a certain way. Sort of hip and crazy, or refined and smelly, or whatever. I mean, all the teenagers here I've seen either fall into two categories: the poser slum wannabes, or the scantily-clad disasters of parents without morals.

Actually, I lie. There's the third category of "other," who tend to be the minority of decent teens.

There's also the characteristic businessmen and businesswomen who are so primp and classy that you hardly ever see them in the metro or bus system, as they would rather not be associated with the rabble of the city. And there's the lower-class but decent men and women who make as honest a living as the poor non-ghettoized students. (Of course, there's the tons of students in Montreal, like ants flowing between school and home in the middle of nowhere with cheaper rent.)

And everyone else is a tourist. So even the strangest of the bunch seem to match the city or fit in, somewhere. I have yet to see the farmers, pig farm or no pig farm. And I had yet to see the mulleted white trash of the boonies (ie. in the bigger-than-pig-farm communities) with their tow of hick kids and trashy parents...

I said had.

Last night, the most ill-fitting people of Montreal speaking french came into the metro car and had the decency to place themselves in front of Jorgh and I. The white trash gang of three kids, their parents (supposedly), and an older woman gawked at things in general, as I stared in disbelief.

The older woman had a mullet. Not just a mistake of a mullet - a real, live, puffing-like-the-80s-never-left, dyed blonde, something-lives-in-my-hair-cuz-I-let-it mullet.

I thought that the older woman was weird, but then I watched the couple. At first, the younger woman seemed content on sitting on the single seat by herself, but then she induced the man to sit on the chair, and then plopped herself on top of him. It's not unusual to see this kind of affection in the metro, as the younger twenty-somethings and teens do this often, but it's very difficult to watch two fourty year-olds do this with their kids running amok in the metro.

The woman of the couple was wearing the stereotypical tight leopard-print clothing, stilleto high heels, and had a mop of a hairdo. The man was undescript, but would remind me very much of the people I have seen during my years living in Chicoutimi.

Then there were the three kids. I shudder to think of what kind of crap they go through at home.

Think of all those television shows. Then say to yourself that television is not reality. Then think of what you would think after seeing these people.

Yeah, I thought so too.


It is not nice to point and it is not nice to stare... but when it comes to white trash I don't think they care.

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