Proud to be an American...and an Espanolian...is that a word?

Today being September 11th and all, I feel I should express my sentiments on being American. I was going to write an essay on what it means to be an American to me…but then I remembered that I’m not a 1950’s 3rd grader. So instead I will tell you a little about my American experience. I was pondering this as I was driving home from work last night as I passed the people selling newspapers on the street. In the city where I live, there is one main newspaper that is published weekly…and sold by newsies in the street (like the movie Newsies with significantly less singing and dancing…and I have yet to see one that looks like Christian Bale). They slow down traffic every Wednesday evening as people stop in the middle of the road to buy their paper…and I am sorely tempted to run them over (I haven’t yet committed vehicular manslaughter…but it is sometimes tempting). There is also a woman who wears a huge pioneer type bonnet as she sells papers out of the trunk of her car. I recently found out that we also have two prostitutes in our town! Who knew!! We call one of them the dog-faced prostitute and the other one we just call the other one….I’ll be honest I’ve never actually seen either of them but I hear they hang out around the abandoned Taco Bell building and since I don’t really have occasion to kick it in abandoned buildings, our paths haven’t crossed. We are also the low rider capitol of the world. I have a good friend who lives in Arizona who had to call me up to let me know she learned this about good ol’ Espanola in her Chicano studies class. We even have low rider bicycles…complete with velvet banana seats, chain handle bars and plenty of murals of the Virgin Mary…I even saw one of them yesterday. Even though we have our eccentricities, I’d say in a lot of ways we are pretty similar to most American towns. We shop at Walmart, we eat at Chile’s, we love our stadium seating movie theatre (shout out to Dream Catcher Theatres…way to go on your expansion, mad props on the 10 screens and more bathroom stalls), and we cruise the Sonic’s (we have ‘em on each end of town to make a good loop…even though now they extend them to the gas station in front of the Walmart with their tricked out cars…and block the parking lot, but that’s a rant for another day).
I think that there are so many interesting and wonderful things about being American! What I think is so great is that everyone’s experience is a little different and so much the same. Let me know some of your unique American experiences!