The other day I over-heard my mother refer once again to the people she has always described as her “Brit-friends.” These are a collection of intensely vulgar, middle-aged British women who live in Southern California in The Mom's surrounding neighborhoods. She has a lot of them, and this makes sense because she’s an Englishwoman herself; it’s important to have people who can relate to you as fellow etrangers who speak your language, even if it is just a funny form of English. It’s just natural. I find it easy to live without Brits in my life because I grew up with Americans, but to someone who spent the first 40 odd years of her life in Britain, “Brit-friends” are a natural crutch in this baffling nation of Ke$ha and “Jackass: The Movie 3” (I mean, yours truly gets why 1.5 hours of men shooting themselves in the testicles with pellet-guns is considered not only art, but also, inevitably, a highly imitable idea, but some people who weren't brought up in the U.S. are just classless and have no taste for literature.).
The thing is, I take personal umbrage with the “Brit-friends” word because it lies. It lies the way you lie to a friend whose taste, as evidenced by their new beige flat sandals, frankly sucks: subtly, and through forced positivity. “Brit-friends” implies that there exist “American-friends” or “Japanese-friends” or any kind of friends other than “Brit-friends,” and their simply, tragically, aren’t.
“You really ought to just call them your friends. At this point the “Brit” part is pretty much redundant.” I confront her, furiously. Enough is enough.
“What do you mean?” she cries, “I’ve got American friends.”
I look at her. “Like who?” She stops to think. This is a toughie…
My mom is funny because at 5’ 2” (or about 0.05 blue whale lengths) she’s really just a very, very small lady. And although I stand nearly a foot taller than her, because of the first eleven years or so of my life in which she towered over me, I still think of her as an imposing figure. When she pauses like this, there is a moment of relief for me because it means she’s not terrifying me for one moment with her monstrous and overwhelming personality.
”I like Wendy.” Wendy lives in Montana.
”Wendy lives in Montana.” 915 miles away, in case you were curious. Or about 48,312 blue whales.
“Fat Joyce, then.” Fat Joyce is very fat.
“You hate Fat Joyce, that’s why you call her Fat Joyce.”
“I don’t hate her, you know I don’t hate anyone. That’s awful. I just don’t like her one bit. I’m friends with Cheryl Miller.”
“Mum, you never see her, and if you have to slowly think of individuals one by one, then they don’t count. I’m sorry.”
She takes a while to consider this. Finally, with every ounce of dignity that pulses within her tiny, tiny frame, she delivers the following logical response with impressive matter-of-factness:
“I don’t have to reveal to the likes of you how many friends I have.”
And that’s that.
I just find it strange that in a nation that exceeds 300,000,000 people, this woman either can't or doesn't want to be friends with a single native.
This is the kind of chauvinism you get when you have a family of immigrants that on the outside seems to be just like everyone else in their host-country. We are white, we speak English, and we’re not Australian or Scottish. Consequently we aren’t given that dose of inferiority that most foreigners are fed, and so we run off with the idea that we tricked the system and don’t have to play with the rules or even with the other team.
This chauvinism is what's known as the Sin of Pride.
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