11 November 2007

I’m walking to a friend’s for lunch on Saturday, dressed rather nattily: plaid pants, grey merino sweater over a pink oxford cloth dress shirt with a button-down collar. I live a total of five minutes away and arrive on her street just on time. As I’m crossing the street, a police car pulls in front of me from seemingly nowhere and the cop, easily in his 20’s, asks me for ID. Since it’s the law for citizens to carry ID, I take it out of my pocket and the guy asks me if I live in the neighborhood. Paralyzed with fear, I say yes, and he puts my number in his car’s computer. Five minutes later, he hands my ID back and wishes me a Shabbat Shalom, driving away. I’m shaking, I’m furious, I mouth an expletive at his rear window and walk up the stairs to my friend’s apartment.
I normally say I have no problem getting stopped, since as far as I know I’m not involved in any illegal operation. Sure, I blast Arab music in my apartment, but the neighbors and the next-door health clinic have yet to call the cops on me. And there are days when I know I could be targeted, based on how I look. I’m trying to believe that this cop was simply bored and wanted something to do by pulling me over. After all, he was darker in skin tone than me.
I’m trying not to think about it, remembering to write some snappier responses to bring along for the next time being stopped Walking While Semitic. In the meantime, I’ve joined the mainstream and am thoroughly enjoying The Next Big Thing: Little Mosque on the Prairie, a Canadian sitcom about the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims in a small town in Saskatchewan. The show is funny, right on topic, and a great remedy for being racially profiled.

It’s becoming winter. The jelly doughnuts started appearing on bakery shelves a few weeks ago in a two-month preparation for Hannukah, the scarves are back, and it’s Festigal time.
Festigal (or Pestigal, for the grammatically correct) is apparently this annual nationwide concert/performance for kids featuring the most popular celebrities. Each year, there seems to be a theme song that gets its own music video, which is nothing more than rewritten classic (and already painful in their original form) international pop songs. One year it was “I Need a Hero,” another year it was “The Final Countdown”…this year is “Major Tom” by Peter Schilling, who wrote it as a response/idolization of David Bowie and his Ziggy Stardust image. I remember hearing this song ten years ago on the classic rock station along with the Moody Blues and Supertramp…and now it’s the theme song inevitably to be sung by thousands of schoolchildren.

After watching every conceivable Halloween special from American TV (it’s amazing how many Americans mark the holiday cycle by what’s on TV, a fact proven by the comments on internet sites with these videos), it’s slowly time for the Thanksgiving specials.

Postscript: It rained nonstop for close to two hours this evening! Hopefully they sell rubber galoshes here, otherwise maybe I can melt some Crocs into something more useful.