You can go to hell, I am going to Texas

We seem to notice T-shirts these days. Our title was on one of the passengers ahead of me at the HNL international airport lined up for Homeland Security clearance, not usually the fast line at any airport. I bothered to cast our ¿como esta? and we caught the smile on his face that loosened the conversation off his Tejano tongue.

He was a young el gente del Houston traveling with his wife and three daughters. They must not have traveled on a plane recently cause they brought their soda cans and bottled waters with them. When they discovered they had to throw them away, they offered them to those in the line. Amazingly, there were no takers for the carbonated sugar waters but the mineral ones went fast; sodas went to the bin.

When he found out I went to school in Dallas, Texas, he brightened up some and our typically Texan Texicano was proud to affirm his T-shirt’s message. He also had a que sera, sera attitude, which was a fresh relief compared to the Anglos’ (Haoles in Hawaii) behavior who were up in arms at our check-in counter when the flight was delayed.

The flight was ready on the tarmac, but the crew came in late in their previous flight; Continental was obligated to accord them a required rest time before getting them to another jet bird’s cockpit and galley. However, it meant not a few inconveniences to passengers connecting to other flights early Monday morning. My SFO connection was moved three hours later, and trying to make amends, the airport crew checked in my book bag at no extra cost. Consequently, we landed in SF without my book bag and my blood pressure medicine!

The irate passengers within my hearing were of two kinds. The first were angry because the system would not budge to accommodate their wishes. There is a contractual agreement in place that cannot be lightly abrogated, by gum! The second group wanted to be pacified for their inconvenience with a voucher for a free flight, or, at least an in-flight or airport beverage and/or meal. There was an atmosphere of rights being violated or taken for granted that needed to be satisfied, by gum!

This sense of right’s violation appeared more like the response of children rather than adults, and as the insistence to meet one’s entitlement intensified, so the inner rigidity of spoiled brats made more manifest.

It is not very helpful to characterize a whole nation as a people of spoiled brat who want lollipops from the sample of the behavior of the passengers but there is a confrontational nature parading in the garb of moral indignation and an air of self-righteousness, not unlike the response of the tea party or the progressive liberals to the recent debt ceiling legislation.

We do not find this surprising as, in our previous incarnation in the fellowship of those who try to show compassion for the disenfranchised and the marginalized, our internal resolve developed in direct proportion to our desire to be effective advocates for other people’s rights, turning us often into moralistic demagogues and self-righteous pricks.

Older siblings often have a tendency to play dictatorial elder and a cousin in Honolulu is often at odds with his older brother because, though retired at past 60, the older brother from California comes in and tells everyone how to live their lives right.

We are the stories we create or created for us, which are invariably part true and part fiction. An elder sister was once the butt of family jokes about being mistakenly mixed up during WWII at the hospital where she was born when the lights were turned off during air raids. It was my Dad’s attempt at humor and to explain why sister’s physical features differed from the other siblings. It was not until she was 40 that she finally exploded in protest against the demeaning and patently untrue story.

The story of our youngest brother was that of the simpleton whose cognitive faculties were not suited for academic work so he was enrolled in vocational training in high school. He has since spent his career to contravene that image, but he also acts as if he is the only one responsible and capable enough to handle the affairs of our parents.

In America, perdition is being in a dysfunctional relationship; hell is when the hallowed family relations no longer work at all. Both in the CNMI is living the illusion that all is well with the Chamolinian family!

The reality of the family as the stable unit of society went with the collapse of agricultural economy, and even the nuclear family unit of the industrial revolution that prominently defined America’s post-WWII filial reality, with its current high rate of divorce at more than half of legalized conjugal relationships, the stable family unit of our hopes and dreams no longer abides.

The last bastion of sanity is in the individual mind. And there lies the challenge of anything we do today to define the nature of our humanity. While I am ultimately heading to Texas in this voyage and pilgrimage, I am joining folks from around the country to reflect on what it means to wrestle realistic living in our time. Anyone who has watched reality shows lately will understand that to confront reality is like staring hell in the face. And yes, we will do that in Texas!

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Vergara is a regular contributor to the [/I]Saipan Tribune’[I]s Opinion Section[/I]