The American Dream For Breakfast

Posted by parkejladd on Jan 10, 2010 in Featured {Article}, Slider | 6 comments

I’m awake this morning.

I’m awake, but as I twist my way out of bed I glance quickly inward and decide to let my soul sleep in.  “Take the day off,” I whisper quietly so not to add to the blaring alarm doing its job in the background.  The alarm clock is anything but an alarm.  It sounds at the same time, on the same days, from the same corner of the same room.  Not very alarming.  I’m impatiently expecting the buzzer even before my brain fully adjusts to its awkward screaming in my direction from its lofty perch on top of my dresser.  The alarm clock still doesn’t wake my soul from its slumber so neither will I.  I let it stay in bed nestled somewhere between the warmth of my heavy comforter and soft sheets–tucked somewhere between two plush pillows where moments ago my head and heart silently rested.  Moments earlier until that alarm went off, welcoming my crusted eyes and cramped neck, along with the rest of my flesh and bones, into the cold, dry world of my dark, secluded bedroom.

Alarm killed.  Shower.

“Please shower,” I think to myself, “because America can’t stand dirty people who smell.”  We can’t stand people with brown dirt under their nails or hints of body odor streaming from their arm pits.  Put some deodorant on.  Use lots of soap, lots of shampoo.  “You smell like an old, dirty man, like you’ve been living on the streets,”  we think to ourselves.  “What side of whose bed did you wake up on?”  We don’t like smelly people.  They smell, why should we?  It’s hard to love people when they stink, when the aroma of last nights booze still looms on their alcohol addicted breathe.  Alcohol combined with morning-breathe-bacteria smells like a field mouse that ate thick, creamy peanut butter, drank a shot or two of jager, and proceeded to defecate in your mouth only to be discovered the following morning stiff as a board, lifeless, and entombed in saliva.  It’s hard to love people who smell like a drunk, rotten, fecal-encrusted, mouse.  We like to love people who smell like fabric softener, daisies, and sunscreen.  We like to love people who have breathe that smells like peppermint and wild raspberries with a hint of white-chocolate blended in.  We like to love people who take showers.

Wake up, take a shower, brush your teeth, put deodorant on, wear clean clothes.

I creep around the bedroom attempting not to awaken my soul.  I don’t want to disturb it, don’t want it to get angry at me for ignoring it last night and the night before that.  I don’t want to have to talk about the gap in our relationship, the void slowly growing between us.  I don’t want to talk about us.  I simply want to sneak away into the dark, cold morning, to leave my problems at the door.  Take my shower, eat my food, drink my coffee, get in my warm car with heated, leather seats, and hit the interstate.  No time for arguing with my soul today.  Maybe tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe this weekend we will really talk, really get things straightened out.  Maybe.  I’m pretty busy these days.  I have a job.  I make money.  It’s important to make money.  I have to make and save money in case of an emergency.  Who else would take care of me?  I have to take care of myself and my family.  No one else will do it for me.  It’s a dog eat dog world.  Or something like that.  What would happen if I lost my house?  My car?  My job?  I need a back-up plan, a plan-b.  I need money, lots of money.  I have to make money other wise I might not be able to wake up in a warm bed or take a hot shower every morning, and then I would smell.  I would smell like someone who has no money.  I would look like someone who didn’t care about money.  I would look like that weird guy from the Bible who ate locust and honey, lived in the desert, and wore camel fur for clothes.  Strange way to live.  Not very professional.

This morning I smell like money.

It’s all over me.  I’m covered in it.  I smell like an oily, crinkled, twenty dollar bill that’s been in hiding, stored away in someone’s savings account for the past 45 years waiting for a 65th birthday so it could come out and play in a warmer, greener place.  Savings accounts are like a place of purgatory for money.  Our dollars are placed there in good grace until they are refined enough to come out and go on a permanent, summer vacation preferably somewhere with a well manicured golf course filled with lots of other people living beyond their 65th year.  I literally smell like money.  It’s pouring out of my designer jeans, my designer shirt, my designer boots.  My underwear cost me $20.  I read somewhere that the average Kenyan makes less than $2 a day.  An average Kenyan could eat, live and play for two weeks on what I pull onto my raspberry scented butt every morning after a hot shower.

I’m not going to think about rural Kenyans or Guatemalans or other hurting people.  Not this morning.

I don’t want to wake my soul today.  There’s no need to prod it out of bed on this cold, dark, snowy morning.  I smell good, like a true American.  I smell like an American.  I look like an American, like something slightly less than what you would find in a magazine.  Depends on the magazine, I suppose.  Depends on the media.  As an American, it’s important that I live up to the standards which the media and Hollywood and politicians put up in front of me.  It’s important that I know what’s important, and I know that what’s actually important is looking like I know and understand what’s important.  I don’t have to do anything with what’s important, I just have to look like I know that it exists and thus pretend to care that it does.  This is how I cope with the Kenyans or anyone else who could easily live off the cost of my underwear.  It’s how I cope with the homeless and turn my gaze away from the dirty, the broken, the prostitutes, the grimy, and the poor.  It’s how I swiftly walk away from the robbed, beaten, naked man left for dead along the side of the road to Jericho.  It’s how I cope with those who don’t take showers and walk around smelly and disheveled.

Breakfast.

I have to have breakfast.  I can’t get started without food.  I need to eat every morning otherwise I might as well go back to bed, back to where my soul is silently resting.  I won’t do that though.  My soul can wait.  My stomach cannot.  My stomach calls to me.  A bowl, a spoon, some rolled oats, some water, some fresh fruit, a cup of coffee, 5 minutes of microwave time, and I’m ready to go.  I’m pretty sure I couldn’t survive without breakfast.  It’s what champions are made of after all.  Or something like that.  Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Or something like that.  I don’t eat too much though.  I have to stay trim.  I have to be in shape.  It’s okay to smell when you work out.  In America, if you sweat in a gym, it’s okay, we still love you.  In fact, we love you more if you’re in shape.  If you’re fat you probably don’t work out, and you definitely don’t uphold the magazine standards.  So while we will still love you, we won’t love you as much because you are draining the system and making the rest of us look bad when we have to associate with you during our day.  If you smell after you workout, it’s great.  If you smell because you can’t pay your water bill, it’s a deal breaker.  Be careful as to why you smell badly.

7:35am.

Time to go.  Time to get in my car.  My car cost thousands of dollars.  I won’t tell you exactly how much it cost because it’s not high enough to really impress you.  Someone living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or someone who gave up their own dreams in order to serve others would be impressed, but you would not be.  I drive downtown very quickly.  It may be the cheap, unfairly traded coffee pushing me, or it may be my hurry-up and get this over with, American, can-do, competitive, attitude.  Either way, by car, I quickly travel the distance most people throughout the rest of the world walk each day in order to simply retrieve water for themselves and their dieing, diarrhea ridden, bacteria infested, children.  Dirty water.  Less water than I used to take my hot shower this morning.  I’m not going to think about it today though.  Maybe, if I ever decide to wake my soul, I will think about such things then.

Until then, sweet dreams.  Sleep well.  Try to not stink.