Juangis In America!
Friends...
Let’s talk about the American Dream.
The land of opportunity! Soaring skyscrapers! Vibrant natural wonders!
All the technological marvels and comforts of one of the most developed countries on the planet. We can click a button on our smartphone and have just about whatever random junk we desire delivered to our door.
You want a jet ski?
Click.
Organic cat food sourced from the finest agricultural science?
Click.
A crate of literal deceased piglets for a class of biology students to dissect?
You get the picture...
Here in America, we’ve got it all. Assuming, of course, you’ve got the cash.
But what would it be like to enter into this absurd, fast-casual, highly digitized reality we live in if you were born and raised in a different place? What if the place you were born and raised in was the kind of place where the grocery store shelves were usually close to empty? Where the electricity randomly came and went just like my ex-wife? Where people carry around “fake” phones to surrender to the inevitable street muggers?
What if you came from Venezuela?
Like my wife’s cousin Juangis. A man forged in the fires of a Latin American country that routinely has some of the highest levels of crime, poverty, and societal breakdown in the western hemisphere. With his carefully hoarded bitcoin stash completely spent on his plane ticket and not a dime to his name, he arrived into the suburban sprawl of the Midwest without a clue last year.
Now, my lovely wife is also from Venezuela. Aside from being incredibly beautiful and awesome, she’s also smart as hell. Speaks two languages. Incredible work ethic. Capable and determined. She’s got it all.
Stay away. I called dibs.
Juangis, however…
Well, those genetics must have branched off somewhere else entirely… Having spent his adolescent years living a sheltered life with minimal social interaction and looking like a Latino Harry Potter, Juangis was not prepared for the assault on his mind and body of the American experience.
Our first stop, with Juangis fresh off the airplane, and with my wife having a panic attack because he sat around in the terminal for 30 minutes wondering which way to the exit, was to get him an exceedingly American cheeseburger.
Now, if you’ve never experienced a Venezuelan Hamburguesa, they’re pretty awesome. Tons of meat and cheese, piled high in a downright comical display about 8 inches tall, but even that culinary monstrosity can’t compare to a good old fashioned American cheeseburger. Good effort, Venezuela, but burgers are a national pastime up here. Juangis had never experienced anything so magical in his entire life.
America! Fuck yeah!
We spent those first few weeks doing our best to get Juangis acclimated to American life as best we could. Explaining to him that certain functions of our society work as intended was an enlightening experience.
Yes, the postal service not only exists, but does a pretty good job!
Yes, car insurance companies function normally and will definitely catch you if you try to defraud them.
Yes, the electricity stays on all the time.
No, you don’t have to worry, the same type of meat will be available next week at the grocery store.
No, it’s extremely unlikely that we get robbed in broad daylight walking downtown.
No, you don’t have to worry about your employer refusing to pay you, that’s straight up illegal my dude…
But despite his rapid acclimation to our American lifestyle, there were still some learning curves to deal with. The amount of times I’ve had to rub my temples and sigh deeply about some truly retarded shit seems to have quadrupled in Juangis’ presence. The language barrier surely doesn’t help either. I love the guy, but God damn the wonders never cease.
I once witnessed Juangis attempt to take his shoes off going through security at a nightclub. My wife was so embarrassed that I thought for sure I’d become a widow right there on the spot.
Juangis almost burned the house down once because the idea of a takeout food container not being able to withstand the convection power of the air fryer didn’t seem to cross his mind.
Spilled something on the carpet? No problem for Juangis! This random bottle of cleaner we can’t read? Must surely be for carpets. Too bad for my floor that it was fucking bleach.
Now, friends, I could spend a great deal of time recounting all the different stories of Juangis blundering his way through America, but that’s not what this is about. What’s become abundantly clear to me watching this process unfold isn’t as simple as “Haha, look at this guy make a fool of himself!”
No. I share these fun snapshots with you all to illustrate an important point that I think we often forget.
Things function properly here in America.
Scroll through your feed or browse around the internet and you might assume our entire society is on the verge of some Mad Max-cannibal-holocaust shit, but that’s simply not the case.
I can write you a letter, drop it in the mail, and it’ll undoubtedly arrive at the correct destination. I can pick up my phone and call the police to report a crime, at which point uniformed officers will attempt to uphold the law without asking for a bribe. I can turn on my water faucet and have clean, potable water come rushing out, no need to have a water truck fill up the holding tanks on the side of my house, which was probably constructed with zero building regulations of any kind.
We take for granted the things we experience every day. Our world looks scary and messed up because most of us lack perspective. Sure, we’ve all got problems. Our country and our world have problems. But the next time you feel like the world is ending, take a deep breath, appreciate the infrastructure all around you, the functional economy, the technological advancements, the happiness to be found in this confusing mess.
And if you see a dude who looks like Hispanic Harry Potter driving ten under the speed limit, give Juangis a wave, he’s still learning how the traffic laws work…
Thanks for reading.
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