DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

There are areas in San Francisco where the day-laborers congregate, hanging out on the sidewalk at certain intersections waiting for someone to drive up and hold a couple fingers out the window. Negotiations, if any, are done in Spanish, because English fluency is not a prerequisite for this profession. Just a willingness to bust one’s hump for the day, in exchange for transportation, lunch, and $10/hr.

Last Saturday we drove to the City early to meet friends for breakfast. Turns out our friends live two doors from one of these intersections. We pulled up in front of the house and stopped the car, scanning for house numbers, not sure where to park… when on the periphery of my attention I realized our car was being swarmed by a dozen running Mexican guys.

Fight or flight! Hormones move faster than rational thought. But no faster than irrational thought — because I thought we were being carjacked. “Drive!” I yelled to my wife in a panicked voice. Two of the guys had reached the car and were trying to open the back doors!

I was flashing back to a time when my wife and I, lost on the wrong side of Potrero Hill, ended up in a line of cars in front of some housing projects. The cars had stopped. Aggressive-looking men lined both sidewalks. One or two guys would approach each driver, in turn, and carry out a transaction of the sort that people go to jail for, assuming the police had the guts (or sufficiently poor sense of direction) to drive through this particular housing project. We were not shopping for crack, unlike the rest of the drivers. I’m grateful to this day that the neighborhood sales staff recognized us for what we were — lost and anxious — and let us drive through without incident.

Anyway, since then I’ve felt vulnerable in my car. Cars don’t offer nearly as much protection as you might think. Not even big cars; big cars just cost more to fix. You can’t out-drive a bullet, or even a well-thrown rock.

The funny thing about last Saturday — well, funny in retrospect — is that the guys who I momentarily thought were trying to steal my car and/or wife are without doubt among the most cheerful, Catholic, hard-working people in the City. They’re the sort of people who wait in line at the Post Office in Friday afternoons to wire money home to their families. The sort of people who are happy to dig out concrete and asphalt and haul boulders for eight hours a day in the summer sun. The sort of people who would cut my grass with a smile, if only I spoke enough Spanish to arrange it.