I’ve come to realize that white people, aka “my people,” are kinda yawnsville.  Don’t get me wrong I love argyle, J.Crew, and Nantucket as much as the next white yuppie, but we, as a people, are un peu vanilla. And as much as I adore the J.Crew I-just-spent-the-day-at-the-country-club look, I couldn’t help but be hypnotized by the Indian Slumdog Millionaire dancers at the Oscars with their pretty saris swirling around (not to mention all of the colors in the movie itself).  I don’t care if the saris looked like someone went berserk with an infomercial bedazzled gun, after seeing the dancers I was ready to movie to Mumbai, give up eating cows for curry, and enroll in a Masala Bhangra dance class.  Jai Ho!  And not to mention, how has it NOT occurred to the American fashion industry that saris are THE BEST answer to having a “fat day.”  With a country full of fat people where the Biggest Looser is a hit show, I say Saris for everyone!  It’s the new moo-moo for this millennium.  Think about the kinda mileage you can get out them during the Holidays.  That’s my plan for an economic stimulus.

We already know that I love the latins, a love which I know is not necessarily shared by my people.  But dit-moi, how can you watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona and NOT think Penelope Cruise going loca isn’t, in some way, something that you secretly wish you could do because it’s just so damn sexy to see her and Javier Bardem argue in Spanish.  Doesn’t it sound so much more passionate in Spanish?  And btw, am I the only one who loves Penelope Cruise in Spanish movies, but not so much when it comes to movies in English?

However, despite my love for the latins and sari clad women, I sometimes wish I was an old black southern woman (“OBSW”).  I love them!  They know life’s struggles and ain’t nothing in this stage of their life that is going to phase them.  They know how to discern what’s really important and how to cut through the forest of unimportant B.S. that so many of us get hung up on.  These lovely senior ladies have a way of way of expressing themselves with their cute little sayings and their accents that makes it adorable even when one of them is dressing you down.

I was most recently reminded of my secret desire to be part of the OBSW club after “Smitty,” a security guard at one of my favorite stores, befriended me when I was stocking up on some basics for my solo African honeymoon. First of all can I just say what a cool nickname Smitty is?  I have 20 or so nicknames, but nothing comes close to being as cool as Smitty.  Smitty just sounds hardcore.

At first I thought Smitty was a bit of a nutter.  She started telling me about how when she meets a customer she doesn’t like she’ll imagine that while the “bad customer” is sleeping, she’s standing over them whispering in their ear telling them to stay away from her.  She’ convinced it works too as she’s never seen a “bad customer” back.  Then she told me that she had the gift of prophecy and various soothsayer-like things.  When she told me that I was thinking, “what kind of loon am I talking to?  This is way too New Orleans Madame LaVeau/Interview With a Vampire voodoo scene for me, but I better be nice to her because I don’t want any bad juju, especially when I’m heading to Africa and planning on meeting my future husband on my safari.”  However, after talking to her for over 20 minutes, I’m now convinced that my girl Smitty needs her own Daytime TV show.  I could totally see her telling whiney people from the burbs to stop complaining and get on with it!  Move over Dr. Phil, Mama Smitty is in town!

Picture the following monologue spoken with a charming southern accent when describing a mopey old customer who recently lost her brother (her accent was slightly stronger than Brad Pitt’s in the Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons.  Perhaps more akin to the older woman we see in the beginning of the movie), “I said to her, what you think you’re the only person to have lost someone? I’ve lost my muthah, my 2 bruthaahs and sistuh and my husband.  My husband died three years ago and still I haven’t found a man (pronounced like “maaaan”) that I so much as want to have a cup of MacDonald’s premium coffee with, but you don’t see me layin down and dyin do ya?  You think I’m going to let that botha me, I ain’t gonna let that botha me.  So I told her you can either be miserable and go jump in the grave with your brother and die or you can start living.”  I’m not quite sure Smitty knew that she was coming dangerously close to lifting the “get busy livin’ or get busy dying” line from Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank Redemption, but I felt inspired to get busy livin.  

So, in the words of my girl Smitty, start livin!