Kiss My West Indies

Columbus Day?

Seriously? 

You stayed home because it was fucking Columbus Day?

Didn’t think to ask me about it last Friday? Didn’t think to call in and double check? Just assumed we didn’t have work in light of some Italian’s momma popping him out in 1451?

Okay, okay then, let me tell you what. Why don’t you take today off, too? In celebration of… Sir Martin Frobisher going to Greenland?

Yeah, that’s it. And then Wednesday? Well, that’s Gaspar Corte Real Day, so you’re not going to want to trouble yourself getting up out of bed. And all next week, you ought to do what every good little American boy and good little American girl is gonna be doing: Attending the great big hometown parade in honor of Explorer Dora and her buddy, Explorer Diego. I wouldn’t want to be unpatriotic by forcing you to come on in and do your job then!

Hell no!

That’s right: You stay home and celebrate explorers. Me, I’ll be right here bringing in the cash. And then? After that? I’ll celebrate the discovery of the Americas by payin’ your ass in beads, scraps of tin, cracked mirrors and smallpox-infested coats.

Then you can go out on a big adventure of your very own. Like downtown – maybe explore the unemployment line.

I know, I know. I know what you’ll say: “But Adri, it’s a declared national holiday! The banks aren’t open! My God, it’s Christopher Columbus Day!”

Then the conservatives will ride on in and moan that I’m not respecting my heritage. That I’m too PC or I’m anti-American. That I must be making this poor employee come in to work because I’m crying over dead Indians or live Mexicans or Mississippi Jews, or whoever the hell it was who was here before Columbus discovered this perfectly vacant lot on which you and I now stand.

But I know. I remember it all from grade school. In 1492, Columbus Boy sailed the ocean blue. Then Christopher Columbus discovered America just like Isaac Newton discovered gravity, except instead of apples, there were a bunch of scalp-less Indians falling out of trees, all of their own volition.

Or wait. Maybe Columbus didn’t discover America after all. It could be that I’m a little sketchy on the details, after all these years that’ve come and gone away.

No, now I remember: He didn’t discover America. He invented it. Yeah, that’s it. Like George Washington invented cherry trees and Al Gore invented the internet.

You see, I respect history. It’s just that I’m a little nervous about celebrating a global welfare case. Someone who went to the government to get taxpayers to pay for him to float away. And plus he spoke Spanish and not English, and I have it on good authority we’ve got too many of those kind ‘round here as it is.

No reason to be celebrating one more!

Or it’s not that I do not love my country. It’s just that when I was young, my old Granny Em, well, she died on Columbus Day, you see. Fell right on over, headfirst into her fish gruel. And then we never ever got to have our Armada races in the family pool.

So in my family, we sort of let the holiday slide after that. Never traded telescopes or doubloons or imported slaves ever again. And we all pretended it was just a day just like any other day.

And even after all these years have passed, the memory still hurts way, way too much too for me to even talk about, really.

Why, Lord, why?

I mean, Granny Em? On Columbus Day?! You bastard! You…

You…

Oh. It’s okay. It’s alright. Now, where was I?

Oh yeah. I was wondering aloud why you unilaterally decided you had Columbus Day off work.  And so now I’m going to make you walk the gang plank even though it’ll make me look like some capitalist jerk.

But then I’m going to go home and have a little Columbus Day celebration of my own. It’ll be me and my girls Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria. And we’ll load ourselves up on spice and on rum and I’m’a do some exploring of my own on all three of ‘em.

If all goes well, they’ll be swabbing the poop deck and kissing my West Indies before you know it.

Then tomorrow, I’ll take my annual post-Columbus Day trip to the neighborhood clinic to get checked out. ‘Cause Niña looks like she’s got scurvy, and everyone knows Pinta’s had the gout.

Oh? Was that too much information? I’m sorry about that.

Now you can go. And by that I mean you should get the hell out.