See through EEL eyes
My Croatian family uses words like Bravo Rachel! and Super, all which sound creepy when bohemian wantabes use the same words. But it suits them just fine. I’m trying my best to learn some of their words – which about 80% don’t have vowels – tough on the tongue. In the meantime, they’re picking up a few words around here – bangs, perpetual.
My favorite thing is seeing the familiar through their eyes. Like for instance the fact that the 14 year old could walk in a Walgreens and think “THIS IS THE BEST STORE!” all because there is stuff crammed into every shelf. But then I explain to her the adverse side of this – the loss of our beloved K&B, the New Orleans drugstore chain, that was first supplanted by Eckerds, no longer in existence, and then by Walgreens, who was then challenged by CVS and Rite Aid, both which seem like third world country drugstores. WE HAVE TOO MUCH and WE WANT TOO MUCH all of this screams.
Back in EEL-land there is one or two of things, not 20. There is a store that sells socks. Not a million stores that sell 20 different kinds of everything.
Recently, the NYT ran an article about how there are all these ghost big box stores, similar to the Circuit City we passed on Veterans the other day. They just rebuilt the Circuit City store post Katrina and then the entire chain went bankrupt – why? Because there is Best Buy, Target, WalMart and a thousand million websites selling the same thing – too much of it at that.
Is it good to have all these choices? An Italian friend trying to order a coffee one day almost passed out on the floor when offered the choices. She said, “Basta!”