Hands down, one of my favourite stand-up comedians is Gabriel Iglesias who is better known by his nickname “Fluffy” which is where he ranked himself on his “Six Levels of Fatness”:
- Big
- Healthy
- Husky
- Fluffy
- DAMN!
- OH HELL NO!
All it takes is one picture and I think you can see where he and I would have a very definite thing in common.
(I was talking about a mutual love of food fool! What did you think I was talking about?!? 😉 )
The reason why I mention this is that you need to know the scale of fatness to truly appreciate what comes next.
So here I am sitting in my neighbour’s F-150 that he was so kind to lend me whilst my Traverse is doing everything but traverse about the streets and motorways of Greater Metropolitan East Raleigh and surrounding environs.
As I’m waiting for Julia and the kids to arrive, you can’t help but notice the Puerto Rican flag hanging from near the mirror and there’s another stylised Puerto Rican flag on the rear window of the cab.
You might get the impression that Miguel and Jessica are quite proud of their heritage and rightfully so. Even though they’re from Boston originally, their heart has always been with their family and culture on that island full of American citizens.
When my father was stationed at Ft Leavenworth, one of my favourite activities whilst on base was the “Know Your World” presentations. The US Army’s “Command and General Staff College” that’s based there (and the reason we spent a year living on the side of the one hill in the entire state of Kansas!) attracts military officers from around the world who are trained on the latest and greatest military leadership doctrines.
These international students would give an in-depth “Know Your World” presentation on their home country and the most memorable one for me was Prince Khalid bin Sultan al Saud of the Saudi Arabian royal family who would eventually become a deputy defence minister. He handed out silver coins to everyone in attendance specially minted for that one presentation which became prized possessions.
As you can imagine, that session was *VERY* well attended. 🙂
In the past 12 years, living next to them has been a delightful in-depth and immersive “Know Your World” experience in the culture and foods of Puerto Rico.
In fact, I’ve come to joke that I’m very definitely “Boricua adjacent” both literally and figuratively!
Anyway, back to the point of the story…
Here I am driving back up the hill toward WakeMed on Shanta in this F-150 proudly displaying the Puerto Rico flag.
A woman driving a Kia Soul (or something similar) has just made the right turn off the New Bern Avenue and is coming down the hill to turn into the chemist’s car park.
The woman’s car also has the Puerto Rican flag flying.
As she’s looking for a way across our lanes, she and I make eye contact and all of a sudden her eyes go well past saucer-width and straight on to massive dinner plate size like you’d see in the old-style cartoons. If they could have completely bugged out of her head, they would have.
And in that moment, I knew *EXACTLY* what she had to be thinking seeing this pearlescent pale alabaster guy with a panoramic at-least-fluffy physique driving a F-150 flying a Puerto Rico flag.
“DAMN!” with a very strong possibility of continuing straight on to “OH HELL NO!” 😉
Later in the day, I thought Miguel was going to die laughing having predicted that very scenario when he handed me the keys. I never imagined it’d come true literally on the first run to Enloe in that truck with the first Puerto Rican I encountered.
I can only imagine the conversation that must have happened later in the day when she found someone she could tell about who was driving that truck with the Puerto Rican flag who definitely didn’t fit the usual description of someone playing for that team! 🙂