Food for Thought

Part 2

I recently learned that the cause for incredibly lucid and scary nightmares that attack people who have Parkinson’s Disease is not the disease, necessarily, but the medications used to treat it.  (see 2017 Blog, Perchance to Dream).  So I am blaming this latest nightmare on my treatments.  Then, again, before I fell asleep I was watching some uneducated bozo with orange hair and a lexicon of five words deliver a State of Disunion speech. I could be wrong.  The cause might have been my dinner of kale burger with turmeric and fennel pollen aoli.  Whatever the reason for my lucid dream, I am recalling it here in as much detail as I can piece together—you know how disjointed dreams can be.

There was this big hall, big and shadowy and dank and dark gray.  And people in gray uniforms were interviewing/questioning other people not in uniform. My dream’s camera zoomed in on two men in uniform, one inhaling a Camel, not the animal but the cigarette and exhaling large puffs of cloudy white smoke.  He had gray hair.  The young man he was talking to was much much younger, early twenties.

“So what did you do?”  The older man took another puff.

“I felt sorry for the guy.   He said he was from Honduras.  Where is Honduras anyway?”
“Not sure. I think South America.”

“Really?  I thought it was near Greece.  He had a Greek name.  I think it was Greek.  Adelmo?  That sound Greek to you?  Man, I got a lot to learn about this job.”
The man with the Camel shrugged his shoulders.  “So what was his story?”

“One of these days I am going to get me out a map and see where all these people come from.  Anyway, his story, according to him, is he was a physician back in Honduras, South America.”

“Probably one of those ‘get-a-doctor’s-degree-in-five-weeks-school.’”

“That’s what I thought.  So I tells him, ‘Look, fella, you ain’t going to practice medicine in the U.S. of A.’  You know what he says?”

Camel man shakes his head.

“He says he heard that certain parts of the United States need doctors.  Imagine that!”
“Some people will say anything to immigrate into our country.”

“Yeah, I’m learning that.”

“So then he tells me he will take any job—any job at all—sweeping streets, picking fruit, collecting garbage.”

“Some doctor he must have been.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.  I tells him if we give him those jobs we are taking them away from our American workers.”

“Good answer.”

“So I look at #3 on our questionnaire, ‘Why do you want to immigrate into the U.S?’  He answers that he is a member of a political party and the members of that party are in danger from gangs.  He says his life and the lives of his wife and children are in serious danger.  He says friends have been killed by these gangs.”

“I says to him, I says, ‘We have gangs here in the United States.  How does coming here solve his problem?’”

“So what was your final decision?”
“Rejected.  He and his family will be on the first boat to South America…..do they take boats back to South America?”

“Break is over.  You want to take the next one?”
“Sure.”

Suddenly, as if materializing out of thin air, an elderly woman with gray hair and a dress straight from the forties stood at the young man’s desk.  Her hands were folded in front of her.

“Okay, lady.  You can sit down.”

The lady in the green dress remained standing.

The young official was half sitting, half standing.

“Lady, I said sit down.  I gotta ask you some questions.”

The lady in the green dress did not move.  “I am accustomed to some preliminary bowing at first meeting.”

“Huh?  C’mon, lady, sit down.  This will take a while.  Rest your rump.”

The eyebrows of the lady in the green dress lifted dramatically.  “I beg your pardon?”

“Look, lady, you wanna immigrate to the U-S-of-A, you gotta go through me.  So please sit down.”

The lady in the green dress sat down on the small chair in front of the desk.

“Good.  Now, what’s your name?”
“Why, young man, I am Queen Elizabeth!”

The young man looked up from his questionnaire and waved his hand holding a pencil.  “Is that like a stage name or somethin’…a rock band?”

The lady in the green dress looked up the high ceiling for understanding.  “Very well.  My full name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of the Royal House of Windsor.”

“So your last name is Windsor?”

“Young man, Royals do not have last names.”

“I sees in your family history here that you wasn’t always a Windsor.”

Queen Elizabeth stared again at the ceiling.   “Dear me, your generation could certainly use some history lessons.  We changed our family name from Saxe Coburn and Gotha to Windsor.”

“So why did you do that?  Running from the law or somethin’?  I mean, you gotta admit it looks suspicious.”

“If you must know, there was, in the nineteen forties, a great deal of unpleasantness going on, and it was not fashionable in England to have German……shall we say, ‘attachments.’”

“Hmmm.  Okay, Liz, we’ll put that aside for now.  Geez, we got quite a dossier on your family and it goes back a ways to some powerful guys.  And you got some sketchy things in your background—gunpowder plots, terrorists, some questionable stuff.”

“Yes, if you study closely, you will learn that my ancestry is rooted in a number of kings.”

“Liz, I gotta tell you.  Kings in history don’t mean anything to me.  All they were were the biggest and strongest thugs on the block.  When they plopped their asses on the throne, they tell everyone they are descended from God.  Who says?  I don’t buy it.”

“My word!”

“Liz, in this building it is my word that counts.  So let’s skip your family history, which, I gotta tell you is iffy, and go to why you want to immigrate to the United States.”

“Well, young man, I have thought about it a great deal.   At first I thought it was my frustration with Brexit and all that folderol, but, essentially, I would like to come here because, well, I am quite bored.”

“Bored?”
“Yes, bored.  Whenever I want to do something, there is always this big fuss and much ado about nothing.  The other day, I told my escorts I wanted to play skee ball.”

“Skee ball?”
“Yes, skee ball.  One of my grandchildren discovered the game at the beach in, I believe, the state of New Jersey, and he bought one of them, the whole alley and those wooden balls, and brought it back to Buck.”

“Buck?”
“I do apologize.  Buck is Buckingham Palace.  I absolutely adored the game.”  Queen Elizabeth turned slightly in her seat.  “It might surprise you, young man, to learn I have become quite good at skee ball.”

“So you want to come to the United States because you are bored in your present position?”

“Essentially, that is correct.”

“All right.  Let’s see.  You know, every day we get another memo telling us to be very very discriminating in who we let immigrate into the U.S.A.  We gotta make sure we don’t let the criminal element in.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“C’mon, Liz.  I was surfing tv the other night, and I started watching a fight when a soccer game broke out…a British soccer game……”

Queen Elizabeth looked straight ahead.

“Liz, that’s a joke.”

“I am not amused.”

“Hey, I’m just doing my job.  What we don’t need is to let in a bunch of criminals into our country.”

“Young man, if you had studied your very own history, you would have learned that crime, crime of all sorts and manner, existed long before immigrants began coming to your country.  That is a fact.”

“Okay, I admit it.  I don’t know much about England.  All I knows is what I see from watching shows from England like Benny Hill or old movies.  I always thought I could make a fortune being a dentist in England.  All the guys look like they have Roquefort cheese for teeth…..Liz, another joke.  Okay.  Back to business.  Liz, what skills do you have?”

“Skills?”
“Yeah.  What are you good at?  I mean, suppose we allow you to immigrate to the U-S-of-A.  How you gonna make a living?”

“Oh dear. Let’s see.  I am very very good at waving.  I have practiced since I was a child, and I think I have it in hand.”

The young man stared at the lady sitting on the other side of the desk.

Queen Elizabeth looked disconcerted.  “Hmm.  ‘In hand?’  That is British humor, young man.  I do it quite well, the waving, with just the right touch of enthusiasm without forfeiting any dignity.”

“Okay, Liz.  I will write down ‘waving.’  Maybe someone politico will hire you to be in a crowd.  Anything else?”

“Well, let’s see.  I can wait.”

“Wait?  You mean waiting on tables?  That’s good.  I’ll put that down.”

Queen Elizabeth’s brows arched.  “Hardly.  I mean I can wait.  When one is the queen, one has to learn to do a great deal of waiting.  Not just being waited on, mind you.  Waiting for spectacular events to begin, waiting for horse races, waiting for people to bow before you…..most of the dullards never do it correctly and so you have to simply stand there and wait for them to finish.”

“Yeah, okay.  I’ll down simply “waiting,” and let whoever reads it interpret what it means.  Anything else?”

“No, I do believe that is it.  Oh, wait.  I can ‘appear.’”

“’Appear?’  What do you mean by ‘appear?’”

“’Appear!’  Exactly what it means.  I appear at places.  ‘The Queen will appear at the Tate gallery, the Queen will appear at the Opening of the Royal Silverware Inventory, the Queen will make an appearance at the Dorchester Dedication of the City Tulip Bed.’  Appear.  I am very good at it.”

“Geez, I don’t know.  But tell you what.  I will put it down on your application.”

“Thank you.”

“Look, Liz, my co-worker is calling me over.  I’ll be right back.”

“By the way, young man, I overheard your earlier conversation with the gentleman you examined before me, and, for your edification, Honduras is in Central America.”

The young man hurries to where the older man is standing by a massive pillar.  He is twitching an unlit cigarette in his hand.

“Yeah?  I see you waved me over.”

“I did.  How many people do you see standing in line?”

“Couple thousand.  Just like every other day.  Why?”

“Listen to me, and listen good.  You and I evaluate them, and you and me get evaluated by our bosses.  And a big part of our evaluation is how fast we process these immigrants.  Get ‘em in, sit ‘em down, and make a decision.  Three minutes or less.”

“Geez.  Three minutes is not a lot of time to digest their stories, evaluate and make a life changing decision.”

The older man put his arm around the shoulders of the younger man.

“Let me help you, kid.  You know where the negative term for an Italian, Wop, comes from?”
“Uh Uh.”

“Without Papers.  You know all these terms like “undocumented immigrants,” “illegal aliens,” “refugees,” “fobs…”

“Fobs?”
“Fresh off the boat.  Kid, they are all code for the same thing—-non-white.  So we make it simple.  Whites-yes, non-whites-no.    Look over at your desk.  What is the color of that broad sitting there?”

“White, I think, but her documents said there is some Celt in there….whatever that is.  She does seem to know her geography, though.”

“First glance, what is she?”
“White.”

“Go over and tell her the good news.”

Then I woke up…….thankfully.

Well, that is my nightmare in as much detail as I can recall.  I have to lay off the kale burgers. You know how screwy a dream can be….even the American dream.