ifeelbetter

I have failed to tell you all of a most interesting factor in my factory work. I have said that there is a clear and decisive racial divide. Polish on one side, Hispanic on the other, and all the other oddballs (mostly Croatian and one "American Girl" as they call me) kind of hover in between. It is very difficult to cross this Polish/Hispanic barrier. Just the language is insurmountable. None of the Polish people speak Spanish or vice versa. What they can do is communicate through broken English, a language which maybe four of them actually claim to be able to speak. So, while there is a general atmosphere of acceptance and comaradery, every now and then the race difference escalates an already volatile situation, like the time all the Polish women were on the side of a women who had her jacket stolen and all the Hispanic women were against her on the basis that she was rude enough to deserve it. So, the end this extremely long preamble: race matters. It is the first thing they asked me when I appeared in their midst. Not my name, my race.

DESPITE all this, there is a budding cross-racial romance. This alone would normally be enough to peak the entire department's interest, ut there are two additional factors which have everybody behaving a bit like paparazzi and policing the two lovebirds interaction. The woman in question (Isabella) is about forty, blonde, absolutely beautiful, Polish, and (here's the stinger) married. The man (Sergio) is Puerto Rican, grumpy, extremely hot, strong, and maybe twenty at most. Sergio actually gets a ride with my benefactress as well every morning, but he refuses to say more than three words in English at a time. I assume he KNOWS more than three words in English because I see him chatting with Isabella in the factory and it definiately ain't in Polish or Spanish. They have REPORTEDLY been seen kissin in the parking lot, and I can report with my own eyes that they often hold hands under the table while we "clean" the hot dogs. He often will drop whatever work he's supposed to be doing to rush to lift something heavy for her or help her with something mundane. They stare at each other across the machinery sometimes and both blush. It's very sweet, as far as I can see. My fellow workers don't have my liberal point of view, though. Diana, a not-so-strict Catholic (she says she could have bribed her priest in her hometown in Croatia to do just about any ceremony for her, though she is technically a bastard according to their doctrine), told me they make her sick. Most of the people I have talked to about it have expressed similar sentiments. And they get mocked at evey oppurtunity. But, I am happy to say, they persevere.

Next week on Hot Diggety Dog Theatre: Women's Liberation in the Hot Dog Factory

Juuust kidding. That's a work in progress. We'll see how far I get with that idea in the next six weeks. Oh, at the end of these six weeks, I will be in glorious freedom! Freedom!