Native, American Style

You all know that feeling. Someone presents you with the perfect opportunity to deliver a devastatingly sweet putdown, clever comment, or witty repartee, and you draw a complete blank. You know there’s a hook there somewhere, but it just doesn’t come through for you. Then you sit up in bed at three in the morning a couple of weeks later, gnashing your teeth because your subconscious has just spit out the words you couldn’t find at the time.

People react to this differently. Rank amateurs will seek out the other person, and say “You remember back in September when you said ‘something’? Well I didn’t say it, but what I thought was ‘something in response’. Ha!” Those that are desperate to be seen as clever will manipulate subsequent conversations in a bald attempt to try and force that same exchange again – sort of a cosmic do-over. Professional conversationalists will just file it away and go back to sleep. It’s this advanced preparation, this ‘prepartee’, if you will, that helps in securing a reputation for mental acuity and linguistic gymnastics. And as a reward, Life sometimes gives you the opportunity to detonate one of these prepared statements.

I lived on an Indian reservation in the mountains for a while, and the sheer stupidity of the tourists that came through always amazed me. I’ll go ahead and get all those questions out of the way:

Q. Do you live in a teepee?
A. No. Those were used by the nomadic Plains tribes. Oh, and it’s the twentieth century, dipwad.

Q. Do you have dirt floors?
A. Well at least you grant me the benefit of the doubt about living in a real house. Did you see the Lowe’s on your way in? Linoleum in the kitchen and carpet in the bedroom, just like you.

Q. What time do the leaves change color?
A. 4:17.

Q. If I drive up the mountain to the lookout tower, do I have to come back down the mountain to get back here?
A. Go away.

People would always ask me if I was Indian. I always told them that I was part Sycamore. The next question was invariably “What’s your Indian name?” Like they all go around sporting names like Dances on Laps or Two Squirrels Fighting Over a Nut. At this time, the Chief’s name was Bill, and the Vice-Chief was named Gerald. Didn’t really fit in with the romanticized visions of the proud redskin living in harmony with nature, but there you are.

So I’m up on a ladder replacing the ballast on one of the fluorescent fixtures in the shop, and this woman walks in. She’s got the vapid, idolizing look in her eyes that I’ve come to realize signifies someone who places all Indians on a pedestal. Sure enough, she heads straight to the printed copies of the tribal enrollment, and starts sifting through them like a prospector panning at a stream. Her shoulders slump, and I know that she hasn’t found the name she hoped to find. A good many of the visitors to the reservation are convinced that they have Indian blood, and the hackneyed claim is that their great-grandmothers were full-bloods. Never a grandfather; never more than three generations ago. My coworkers and I had decided that that particular generation must’ve been nothing than whores to support all of the declarations.

Since she hasn’t found evidence to support her direct claim, she figures that she’ll cozy up to some local and get a contact validation. Now ordinarily, I’m as pasty white as the next Winter-complected European-American, but a couple of summers’ worth of being outdoors made it look like I actually had blood in my body. I also have dark hair, which I wear long. Hey! Long dark hair, a rudimentary tan – must be an Indian!

“So do you live here on the reservation?” she asks hopefully.

“Just over the border,” I reply.

“Are you Indian?”

“Part Sycamore.”

“Oh that’s really cool. My great-grandmother was a full-blood. What’s your Indian name?”

“Many Hands,” I intone, semi-religiously.

“Oh that’s an interesting name. What does it mean?”

At that moment, it all comes together. The fluorescent blazes into life. I put the screwdriver in my pocket, and carry the dead ballast down the ladder. I gesture towards the cool, clean photons showering down from above and tell her:

“Many Hands make light work.”