Human Nature and Stereotypes

I wrote once before about the time I lost a coin purse at SESC, the cultural organization where I use the gym, eat lunch, sit and read etc., and then finding that it had been turned in to lost and found with money intact.

I had similar experiences there recently on two consecutive days. First I left my back back, with my kindle inside, in a locker that I forgot to lock. I have become so confident in how things work here that, when I was finished in the gym and realized what I had done, I showered leisurely before going down to lost and found, where it had been turned in, just as I expected. The very next day, I left my ipod in a locker and didn't realize what I had done until I got home. I took the bus back, and went to lost and found. There it was. Now in these cases, I knew that the articles were found by security personnel who regularly patrol the locker rooms. But these are people who are probably paid a bare minimum, and yet I have no doubts about their honesty.

My latest experience, in the same vein, although somewhat different, was yesterday. I stopped at a small store in our area to buy another fan, so we don't have to keep moving the ones we have around the house with us.  When I entered the store, the young guy who greeted me was wearing sandals, a long white ankle-length tunic and a white skull cap. He sported a long, thick black beard. A regular bin Laden. He was very friendly and, after listening to a few of my fractured sentences said, "You're Dutch?" No. "German?" No. American. "Ah, America. New York!" No, Los Angeles. Close. "Ah...only thing I know about Los Angeles is Lakers." And Hollywood, right? "Yes. Hollywood." He said "Everything we sell is from China. It's junk. In America you can buy better quality things." Yes, but they're probably still made in China.

So I picked one of his junk (but cheap) fans and went to the register to pay with my credit card. Alas, the system was down and it might be for a few hours. He had called half an hour earlier and had been told he would hear something within five hours. I didn't have enough cash, and said it was ok, I'd come back tomorrow. The young man said "no, take the fan and pay me later." I wasn't even sure I trusted my portuguese to believe what I had heard. But I had. I took out my Brazilian national i.d. card and told him he should write down the number. He said, no, it's not necessary. Gesturing upward, and clearly knowing he was making another American allusion, he said "Hey...in God we trust, no?" Only later did I wish I had told him, yeah, but in the U.S. all others pay cash.

Today when I went back to pay, I told him that I had told a friend (one of my students) what he had done, giving me the fan without payment, and that my friend had said "no, that's impossible, no Brazilian would do that." He laughed and said, "but I am Brazilian." He explained that his father was born in "the Levant" (I didn't ask which country) and his mother was born in Spain, but that he was born and raised in Brasil. "What English I know, I learned in Brasil too."

I had met his mother the first time, but today I also met his father. It is interesting to me that both parents, probably in their sixties, were dressed in regular western style, but the son was the one who adopted the traditional Arab garb that is so scary to us Americans.

The store is one of the ubiquitous stores that sell cheap shit from China. Heitor and I just refer to them as Chinese stores, and we don't very often buy things at them, but we will both make a point of patronizing this one when we can. In fact today, I bought a second fan at the same time as I was paying for the first one, because I think his brand of trust needs to be rewarded.

As I was getting ready to leave, the father said "Obama!" And I said "Yes, but I'm worried." He said, using a particular Brazilian slang I had never heard before, "no problem, he's a batata (potato)," which Heitor tells me means something like "he's superior." Amen to that.