ignorance AIN’T bliss

i am well aware that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes i can be an asshole…

…and more often than not, it’s deserved.

take the other day when i made a slightly intoxicated run for pizza. okay, let’s back that up first. i went for breakfast tacos on tuesday per usual, experienced something i’ve dealt with a big chunk of my life, but this time kinda snapped on it. when the lady carried out my bag of food she called out my name…or at least what she ignorantly THOUGHT was my name…

order for SCENE?!?! (or at least that’s how she pronounced “sean”)

“i love the smell of ignorance in the morning”, i said, and walked over to their chalk board, grabbed the blue chalk and wrote the name “juan” (which for all my northern readers is actually pronounced “whon” – like “whip” with the word “on” in place of the “ip”). being a spanish name she nailed the pronunciation, but i told her, “no, it’s pronounced “jew-un”, like it’s spelled. she laughed and said, “can you imagine a mom naming her child ‘jew-un’, honestly?”

i replied with, “sure – in the same ignorant world where you think a white woman would name her kid ‘scene’…” and i gave her the accurate pronunciation.

bet she doesn’t fuck that up again.

this has followed me my whole life – in the ’70’s, when there was really only sean connery in the public eye, and on into the 80’s when we got sean penn, i still kinda forgave it. but in the twenty-first century, with some of the fucked up shit you people name your kids, i figure i should be rid of this now. hell, when i was a kid few and far between was the touristy place that had souvenirs with my name on it…and now they’re EVERYWHERE. i see that as making it common enough to get pronounced accurately now.

and yes, my reaction gets worse when, say, an entire bottle of red wine gets killed inside of an hour or so…and i run for pizza. this one was worse; i walked in and JUST gave the girl my phone number – and because i’m in the local domino’s database, my name came up AND she pronounced it right…but then her retarded manager came out and quickly “corrected” her that is was pronounced “scene”, and then turned to me and APOLOGIZED for her saying it wrong.

i repeated, but slightly modified, my line to “i love the smell of ignorance in the evening…”

she didn’t like this. for all my local readers she’s a bit pale, dark hair, wears dogtags, but is CLEARLY not in military grade shape if you know what i’m saying and i think you do…

“excuse me?!? ignorant?!? don’t be insulting, sir…i went to school in germany…”

“i don’t care”, i replied, “you have NO german accent, you wear dog tags but are CLEARLY not in the military (almost made the fat joke but kept it above brow), so i take it you were a military brat?”

she nodded and i kept going, “so you have an AMERICAN education, and the base is technically AMERICAN soil, so you have no excuse for being ‘ignorant’, i.e. lacking in knowledge…it’s not like i called you ‘stupid’ or something…THAT would be insulting!”

still trying to rescue herself (but digging the hole deeper) she quickly fired back, “well, i only speak english!” when i let her know that being an irish name my name was actually closer to english than hers, i grabbed a coupon and wrote the word “one” on a coupon and asked her to pronounce it, which she did correctly as “won”.

i corrected her that it should be “oh-knee” or “awn-nee” depending on which she preferred. she said, “no, it’s PRONOUNCED…” and i cut her off and said, “but it’s SPELLED…”

i saw a light bulb go on…by jove, i think she’s got it.

how much you wanna bet my pizza has spit on it next time?