Uncle Chubby and the Marlboro Man Aren’t My Friends
By: Tony Russo
Tags: Masks, Snowflake

Photo by Pablò on Unsplash

The Marlboro man was standing too close. I could see his leather-jacketed arm in my periphery while the Wawa cashier rang up my purchases. She was taking too long. Her boyfriend, or some creep trying to pick her up, or her uncle, or just some big, random dude was four-and-a-half feet to my left and their chat was interfering with her concentration.

As the Marlboro man edged closer in anticipation that my transaction was nearly done, I stepped well away from the counter. The cashier, secure behind her plexiglass, meditated over whatever riddle preventer her from rendering a total. Plastering myself against the far wall (sending what I thought was a social-distancing cue) did nothing to help the cashier’s concentration or repel the encroachers.

Since I very rarely leave my house, I see all strangers as mortal threats. My wife, who has assumed all hunter-gatherer roles, has been inured to the absolute lack of consideration we give one another in public.

She has her own tactics for avoiding people, but it’s a survival skill I haven’t cultivated. When I’m out around people of dubious health emergency compliance I get nervous in a way I never do. I can handle crises just fine, but aggressive selfishness stymies me.

I don’t think clearly in crowds anymore, because all I see are the infected lumbering carelessly around. It makes me twitchy.

I was content to judge the Marlboro man. He was thin, gruff, and ruddy with his leather racing jacket zipped to the neck below his bandanna’d face and smoky sport sunglasses. I knew this guy. I knew what he would sound like if he spoke, that he considered himself a plain-talker, and that he knew the jacket flattered him but never would admit it out loud.

But what was disappointing was that he thought he knew me and he was dead wrong.

The cashier must have finished at some point because I sensed she was looking at me expectantly. I was so hyper-attuned to what was going on elsewhere, it was as if I were on psychedelics. From my off-kilter position up against the front glass, the entire store had a fish-eye effect and I could imagine a halo of disease around each rushing person.

She caught my attention as I was distracted trying to plot the course of a couple of young children playing tag in the open space before the sandwich counter. I asked for a bag.

“They don’t have plastic bags in Delaware,” she said with the spiteful glee peculiar to someone enforcing a rule they hate.

As it turned out, a plastic bag ban had been in effect since January 1, and I imagine she had moved from sympathy to antipathy as people like me who count on Wawa to supply them with car trash bags showed their outrage. I wasn’t outraged. I think it’s a great idea. I tried to be supportive.

“Well, good for them,” I said, trying to sound positive.

She, her chubby uncle, and the Marlboro man reacted as if it was a world-class takedown, laughing and repeating it. Apparently, they’re in the banning-plastic-bags-is-government-caving-to-the-snowflakes camp, and I confirmed my own membership by my sick burn.

The camaraderie enervated me so much more than the encroaching, and I scampered away without another word, juggling my groceries in my arms. Being accepted into a group I don’t want to be associated with drives me nuts. It’s not so much the stereotyping as the fact that I’m counted among their number, tacitly endorsing their beliefs by not openly refuting them.

A few weeks ago, I noticed my neighbor was flying his flag upside down. It inspired me to write about flags and patriotism using broad stereotypes about people who flew flags, particularly alt-flags like the Blue Line flag. I got some feedback suggesting the story was too pejorative. I understand the criticism, but it’s also part of the point.

If you don’t want to be stereotyped, don’t fly the stereotyped flag. If you fly your American flag upside down on purpose, people are going to stereotype you. There’s no way to avoid it, any more than there was a way for me to avoid being stereotyped after what sounded like a sarcastic crack. The fact that it wasn’t one only matters to me.

Within three days of me publishing that story, I noticed the flag was righted. I don’t have the kind of readership for it to have been any more than a coincidence, so I wondered what changed.

Maybe flying an upside-down American flag was a sputtering fad. A number of “Stop the Steal” pro-Trump maniacs were flying their flags upside down, my neighbor was just one of them.

It’s also possible someone he trusted asked him what the anger was all about. I like to believe that if a person has a good heart and you tell them they’re being mean that person will be open to change. You can’t say they’re wrong, though. Being told they’re wrong drives some people over the edge.

So often the message we send isn’t the message people hear. My support of banning plastic bags came across as sarcastic. My neighbor’s upside-down flag came across as vicious and angry.

When it comes to misunderstandings like these, it does no good to blame the listener and exonerate yourself. I know I often sound sarcastic, often without trying. I’ve hurt people’s feelings with accidental sarcasm, so I can’t blame the Wawa guys. It’s a flaw of mine I have to improve or learn to live with.

Maybe my neighbor is the same way. I really like to think he realized that he wasn’t conveying the message he was going for. That people told him flying his inverted flag was more likely to hurt red-blooded Americans than the people he was trying to offend. Those people just wrote him off as a maniac.

I’m glad he righted the flag more for his sake than for mine. It’s tough to learn that you’re not getting through to people the way you hope to. It’s a matter of understanding when your message isn’t hitting and making the necessary adjustments. Even if that means you don’t get to hurt the people you’re mad at.