Drew planned to move in with two other programmers, Trevor and Mr. Purdy, who had more or less lived on our couches for the past few weeks despite both having addresses where they received mail, owned beds and so forth. The living room was littered with family size jars scraped almost-clean of peanut butter, empty diet pepsi bottles, and hand-rolled cigarettes as they worked round the clock on a program to beat the stock market. ("No, this one is different.") The Mountain Goats played on loop over our stereo, a retro appliance demanding the occasional bitch-slap to calm the buzz when the wires might loosen, and housemates snuck in once or twice to febreeze the orange couch which had begun to adopt an ever-ripening eau d' purdy.
Although these weeks hearkened the return of a girlfriend for Trevor, who headed the project and sketched hyper scratches across the common room blackboard, he found time to move. And Mr. Purdy, whose intense concentration reduced movement to a speed generally requiring stop-motion to record efficiently, also managed to shift his belongings to the new place they'd call home.
But Andrew was having some difficulty extracting more than a box or two of belongings from his room. Considering the modest square footage of the place one would assume that moving out would take one trip. But Andrew planned to move by bike, which meant more trips regardless, and somehow his room proved a clown car of junk. So I began packing his shit into boxes while he spent the last 48 hours before Eli's return and my eviction... well... in the front yard building a bike attachment. This contstruction job took more concentration (not to mention petty theft) than actually moving his stuff would have.
He and Mr. Purdy spread the materials across the front yard. They first stole a cart to use, but deciding that it had too much wiggle to its wheels, elected to hacksaw off the wheels and attach them to a new structure. (My parents were visiting this weekend, and of all moments to connect to someone of my generation, my Dad elected this as his opportunity, donating engineering advice as Drew proceeded to disassemble the purloined trolley and connect it to scraps of wood from our shop to build a cart-like device.)
Mr. Purdy has been described by some as a mathematical genius. Below witness him sawing over his own legs and crotch. (This is a sort of self-selective evolutionary step, right?)
The sum result of the weekend was a cart Andrew called the Wooden Mexican "because it will haul stuff for cheap all day long." (Although it did not pack Drew's belongings, load itself, or clean the mold and dust from his room.) Andrew holds the peculiar and stubborn belief that as an ethnic member of a once-persecuted people, he is granted the right to make politically incorrect comments against the metaphorical "new jews," any marginalized folk, namely, in this case Mexicans.
Most of us rolled our eyes and left Andrew to his politically incorrect business, seeing as despite his racist humour he was the one who washed the laundry for and nursed several of the neighbourhood homeless men, most of whom happen to be black men in this neck of the woods.
No one was treated for shock when the Wooden Mexican was broken/abandoned/disassembled not long into its scandalous lifetime of hauling laundry and a week of groceries.
However one poor woman who was visiting at the time, Ben's girlfriend Lisa, absorbed Andrew's influence a bit more than the rest of us. She had several key circumstances: speaking German as her first language, having the US American half of her family residing in the colour-conscious land of Kentucky, and perhaps not knowing quite how full of shit Andrew can be at times.
Time progressed, Lisa returned to Berlin. But in the winter she returned to stay in the co-op, and this time for a lengthier residence instead of a brief visit. She was folded into the cook cycle, assigned a chore, and quickly assumed a comfortable and beloved role in the co-op as "crazy Lisa." She amused us with wacky plans to make lots of money, observations about people in fridges being super funny, and outlines for musicals about psychedelic cats. And when she referenced using "a wooden mexican" in an email to the house listhost, we figured it was simply wild and crazy Lisa joking around if a little colourfully.
But she wasn't it turns out.
That night at dinner she was very rosy-cheeked, but not of joy. I somehow convinced her to discuss what was on her mind, and it turned out that she had used the term "wooden mexican" thinking that, while it was clearly racist, it was an accepted term in American English, which sweeps so many other bigoted terms under the rug. And how did she learn of her mistake? A helpful email from Ed.
Ed, who is so earnest it hurts -- particularly those of us whose veins run with sarcasm -- had taken it upon himself to send Lisa an email letting her know that she'd used a racist word, unique as the expression might be. This edification was a thoughtful, if stilted, slap on the wrist... but the email also included a list of ethnically booby trapped terms to avoid, such as that hot button term "paddy wagon."
Lisa of course was mortified that she'd made the gaffe, embarassed that she'd been called out on it in such a pedantic way, and likely surprised that only one person had spoken up.
This story is usually mentioned in reference to Ed's complete straight-laced reading of everything around him, his blindness to subtext, subtlety and irony. But really, about whom does it speak the most?
