
{"id":24984,"date":"2012-04-12T10:07:55","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T14:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=24984"},"modified":"2012-04-11T16:17:01","modified_gmt":"2012-04-11T20:17:01","slug":"letter-far-from-the-worst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2012\/04\/12\/letter-far-from-the-worst\/","title":{"rendered":"LETTER: Far from \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcthe worst\u00e2\u20ac\u2122"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m finally filling up my new silver Prius that has been running on empty for the past 40 miles. I shake out my dark, messy locks to shed a flurry of confetti from the Good Friday fiesta across the street. I pull back my hair, obscuring most of the remaining confetti, then wait for my car to fill at the corner. The one where the day laborers wait. <\/p>\n<p>A shiny blue car pulls up to mirror me at the pump. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m in a happy daze, the smiles and laughs of the children across the street still tangled in my mind like the confetti in my hair. The driver steps out: a Duke T-shirt, black yoga pants and a non-sequitur khaki jacket. She snarks, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This place is the worst.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even made eye contact, but as if she finds comfort in my Old Navy V-neck, Express jeans and Toyota Prius, she confides in me her bitter feelings for a place that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t home. I smile. A pained, piercing smile.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This place is the worst.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what she meant, but I can guess. My face went sour as she disappeared behind the dividing pillar. I said nothing, but I screamed inside. Before I knew it, she was driving away with who I assume were her husband and son.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This place is the worst.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The sun is setting. A tall black man in baggy pants lumbers through the BP parking lot in which I wait. Two Mexican men sit against the convenience store wall, probably drinking beers. A teenage Latino cuts across the four lanes of Jones Ferry Road on a bike. There are loiterers that I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t notice.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This place is the worst.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d White is not invisible here. Yet sometimes I forget that this is not my home. Open doors, full plates, endless conversation. Bright laughs, warm hugs, colorful imaginations. I forget what it looks like from a pump at the corner across the street. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This place is the worst.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<br \/>\nEarlier that day, two Mexican mothers told me stories of racial discrimination they have experienced in Carrboro, and how they wish they were proficient enough in English to defend themselves. She said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This place is the worst,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and I said nothing. English is my native language, and I said nothing.<br \/>\nI still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what I should have said. I wanted to lie and say that I live across the street. Or maybe I should have told her about the family-friendly party I was coming from. Maybe I should have asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why is this place the worst?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What do you mean?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153this place\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is the worst. Management is oppressive; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where you live if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re \u00e2\u20ac\u0153poor;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d no one wants to wait hours at the corner for a day\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth of minimum-wage (if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re lucky) labor; and people who have the privilege of leaving this place don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give you the time of day when they pass through.<\/p>\n<p>This place is the worst, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also one of the best I know. It may be your pit stop, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my friends\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 home. And you too may see it as a home if you look past the Prius that shares your pump and notice the colorful confetti that decorates the grass across the street.<br \/>\n<strong><br \/>\nLauren Kennedy<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Chapel Hill<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m finally filling up my new silver Prius that has been running on empty for the past 40 miles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24984"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24996,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24984\/revisions\/24996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}