Stereotypes

"We are kind of led to believe that low-income people are somehow not as morally upright as white collar types. It was my shock when I finally entered their world to discover how duplicitous they were."

Funny you should say that. I grew up believing just the opposite, and was surprised to learn that poor people are, on average, no more virtuous than rich people. I didn't get that presumption from my parents, who taught me that people should be judged as individuals, so I must have gotten it from books, television, and movies. In popular fiction, it seems that the good guy is usually poor, hardworking, honest, and kind, while the bad guy is fat, rich, greedy, and mean. You must have read some of the same books and watched some of the same shows that I did. How did we each get the opposite impression from them? Be that as it may, we both had to learn that, as Mrs. O'Hara used to say, "All generalizations are invalid."

I think I understand your evil Tamara now. I assumed that you were paying her to find you a job but, of course, sometimes employers pay an agency to find them likely candidates. Apparently Tamara cared more about her career advancement than she cared about actually doing her job, which is not unusual in the corporate world. The advancement of hourly workers is not usually affected by that kind of behavior, but many of them do it anyway. It must have something to do with human nature. Of course it's not an aspect of our human nature, so maybe we're not really human. You think?

It has been my observation that interracial couples are always a Black man and a White woman, I don't think I've ever seen it the other way around. Of course, I'm going by TV and movies here, you may well have seen it that way in your up-scale, cosmopolitan, sophisticated North Side world, but I haven't. I've seen White guys with Asian women and Hispanic women, but not Black women. Of course there was that thing they did back in the old slave days, but I wouldn't call that a "couple", with the possible exception of Thomas Jefferson and Sally what's-her-name. There is probably a reason for this, and it has something to do with, you know, size.

This is not stereotyping, I saw lots of people in the shower when I was in the army, and I'm here to tell you that all men are not created equal. With very few exceptions, the Black dudes have way bigger wienies than the White dudes. The only White guy I remember with a shlong like that was Sergeant Kaminski, and he was Polish. We had two guys like that in the paper mill, one of them was an American Indian, and I think the other one was Polish, or maybe Italian. His last name was "Jana", but it was pronounced "Jany". So what kind of a name is that?

Sergeant Kaminski spoke barely understandable English, when he spoke at all, which was seldom, but he was well respected by everyone who knew him, and it wasn't because of his big wonker either. He had joined the U.S. Army in the field during World War II, at the age of 14 or 15. Of course he couldn't be officially enlisted at that age, but he joined them de-facto and fought alongside them until the end of the war. He joined on paper as soon as he was old enough, and had been in the army ever since. They didn't give him credit towards his retirement for those early years, which is why he was still in the army 20 years after the war. Most soldiers retire after 20 years, but a few old diehards make it to 30, and I wouldn't be surprised if Kaminski lasted at least that long. It was the only life he had ever known, and he was really good at it. We all agreed that, if the shit ever hit the fan in Berlin, we would follow Sergeant Kaminski anywhere he wanted to lead us. If he couldn't make it out of there alive, no one could.