It's The Great Racist Charlie Brown!

I would like to start this post off by saying that it features some highly offensive language in it. Well, actually no it doesn't but it would if I did some direct quoting. But instead I will substitute some choice words to describe someones race. The word I am trying to replace rhymes with bigger, but has an alternate beginning consonant. Do you get what I'm saying here? So instead of saying a word that is offensive to many, I'll substitute it with a word that applies to a group of people that offends me: Canadians. So if you see the word Canadian in this post, know that it really stands for something else. Do you hear what I'm trying to say? Okay, you get it? Good, then I'll start.

Last night in the hopes of finding something fun to do on Halloween, my sister and I along with a couple of our older cousins perused around the greater area of downtown Lake Charles. I won't begin to describe to tell you how pathetic the greater area of downtown Lake Charles is, but I'm sure you can guess. We were driving around looking for a haunted house exhibit that was going on last year for charity, but for one reason or another was not going on last night. In our unfounded search we came upon two horse drawn carriages perched by the Lake. For some reason we thought this would be a great idea, so we paid our thirty five dollars and hopped on.

I have ridden horse drawn carriages twice before. Once in New Orleans, and another in Memphis, Tennessee. These were good rides, very informative if not a little yawn inducing family activities. I expected something similar in this, but what I got was not at all what was expected. If I had looked closely before getting on this ride, I would have noticed that the driver was missing nearly all of his front teeth. Which in foresight does not bode well for the proceedings. Although now that I think about it that might actually be a prerequisite for carriage drivers. You are not fully qualified unless you are missing your molars.

But at the beginning I had no idea that not everything was on the up and up here. He drove us by the destroyed boardwalk that is under construction. He informed us that they were planning to build some "fancy things like restaurants and night clubs" though he said the word club as if it rhymed with boob. Which let me tell you in normal human pronunciation it does not. But beyond the normal realm of how words are actually said, things were fine. He drove us around the civic center, and the courthouse. He drove us around the loft apartments, and some of the downtown bars where a mass of people were converged outside waiting to get in. This was right around the time that he noticed that a group of people were doing the Lake Charles second annual "Thriller" dance.

Apparently this thirty something redneck did not at all recall his childhood when Michael Jackson was the end all and be all of pop stars. He was highly offended, the only way I could tell because this string of words sprung out of his mouth: "You know, a few years ago they were going to execute that Canadian (Gay Slur), they were going to give him the electric chair. He molested those kids you know? He had the gay sex with them, he did. But then when he died, he became a god damned hero. And then that Canadian turned himself white. I saw some pictures of that Canadian on the TV after he died, of when he was a kid. He was a cute little Canadian baby. But then he became a white woman, molesting all those kids. He molested kids, you know?"

First of all I would like to start by saying, I hate how people recycle old jokes. You know the one about Michael Jackson when people say "he started out a black man and ended up a white woman." Yes, that's frankly hilarious I get it. We should laugh at his personal choices, and his skin disorders, and his race. That is humor. If I were a redneck, I'd like to believe that I'd at least be clever with my racism. I'd like to think that I'd be original. All the while this is happening, my older cousin who is in the middle seat directly behind the driver started egging him on because he thought it was funny. I on the other hand did not find it funny at all. I kept repeatedly saying, that I was mortified. To see if he would stop. He did not stop. I actually told the man that I thought Michael Jackson was a national treasure. I'm not sure what kind of aneurysm made me decide to say that. May I tell you that when he was saying this we were riding through what could be described as the more ethnic part of our city?

I don't know how to drive that point home to you except to say that while he was pronouncing his very colorful view of "how things are" we were literally surrounded by African American trick or treaters and their parents. When I started to say something discreetly about that fact, he informed us that it wasn't important because he had a gun. Well, now that's just fucking fantastic. I was on an armed, racist, horse drawn carriage. I might as well be the ringleader in a fucking Ku Klux Klan rally. I'm not really sure what they do at KKK rallies, but I assume they collectively drink the blood of a goat, and then all beat their wives. Which doesn't really sound like my kind of people.

But I feel like towards the end, things started to look up. When we pulled back into the parking lot we came from, he parked the carriage. We all got off and began to pet the horse, and he came up to us and announced that "tips were appreciated." I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, racism isn't." And then we got in our car and left. I think that I am the modern day Martin Luther King. Aren't I? Well I think I am, and that's enough really.