White privilege in America

Here's a fine example of White privilege. Our friend Ali (we have a lot of friends named Ali, it's true) is married to a White woman. Last week, she was driving and she ran a red light. A policeman saw this and pulled her over. At the time, she was NOT wearing a seat belt. None of her 4 young kids were in child seats. As she opened the car's glove compartment to get her wallet, her husband's gun fell out. (The gun is not registered) And one last tidbit: her driving license had expired.

Now, you might think, that with all these offenses, she'd surely be arrested. Guess again! The police officer gave her a ticket for the red light and merrily went his way. Now, imagine if the driver had brown skin (and maybe a hijab? Or a turban? Or a do-rag?)

So hi-tech it hurts

My husband likes to be "hi-tech" but in reality, he's very low-tech. He likes to buy all sorts of gadgets and continuously upgrades them. Too bad he's not very computer savvy and doesn't know how to use them properly.

Recently, some very good examples of this arose.

Last week, he visited our bank's website. He wanted to view the activity to our account. He was getting frustrated with the site and kept muttering curses. I asked what was the problem.

He said, "This stupid website! It won't show me anything about the account! Only the current balance! Why is the bank hiding information?!!"

I took one quick look at his screen and noticed he was on the "Summary" screen. Very clearly marked, was a link to "Details" One click on that link and Voila! the account details.

(We've had this bank account for a long time and he's used the online banking before, so I don't know why he was so puzzled that day)

A few moments later, he called me over again.

He: "Honey! The bank screen! It just went away! Now I'm on another site! But I wasn't done with the bank! What happened! What do I do?"

Again, I took a quick look. He had 2 tabs open and yes, he had inadvertently switched to the wrong tab. I simply clicked on the 1st tab and he was back on the bank's site.

He's so cute sometimes.


And other times, he's too hi-tech for his own good. Our daughter complained to me one day: "Baba has his iPhone, an iPad, a laptop. He's using all of them and he STILL asked me what time it was!"

I pointed out to her that he was also wearing a watch.
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Details, details...

My husband tends to leave out key details when giving information. THEN, he gets mad when people misunderstand.

For instance, late last night, he got a text message from his friend Ali.

My husband: "Ali just texted. His car is in the shop and he wants me to give him a ride"
Me: "Wow, it's almost midnight - isn't it kind of late?"
My husband: "NO! He wants a ride tomorrow!"
Me: "Well why didn't you say that???"