American Dream

I have looked America in the eye.

She's changed a lot since I was a kid; these days she wears a burqa. At least, she's wearing one when I run into her, sitting in the passenger seat of a bumper car in the theme park where I work. Her husband is driving and they are both laughing uncontrollably, just like the howling ten year olds they crash into. She shouts in Somali or Oromo into a cell phone (held to her ear by her head scarf.)

It's Eid ul-Fitr, the last night of Ramadan. It seems like the entire Muslim population of my state is here, finally letting loose after a month of fasting and prayer. Total chaos everywhere. Ride operators struggle to explain rules and policies to people who barely speak English; children run and shriek with the joy of adrenaline; everywhere friends meet unexpectedly with handshakes and smiles.

Most of the people I work with dread this night, and tell horror stories to anxious rookies. There is of course a fair amount of insanity; a friend of mine got a scalp full of saliva when a boy, eager to impress his friends, thought it would be hilarious to spit off the top of a large thrill ride she was operating. One year one of the custodians found a (dirty) diaper up a tree. Hanging in the branches, no joke. The crowd is the largest of the year (including Saturdays during summer) and many of the guests have a limited knowledge of English. We're short staffed. Everyone is on edge. In my line of work, this is the night when heroes are made and legends are born.

I don't mind too much though. Other people see foreigners who dress strangely, refuse to follow the rules, and leave trash everywhere. I see people integrating the culture of their home countries, out of which they were forced by famine and war, into the giant sauté pan that is our great country. I see people living the American Dream.

The transition is difficult at first, but immigrants are America's gasoline. My ancestors (and yours, unless you're Native American) were at one time just as foreign as the veiled women and robed men who walk the streets outside my apartment. They found a place here, they adapted, and then they built the greatest country in the world. Soon the loud unruly children will be college graduates, business owners, office workers, doctors, lawyers. I love my job, despite the sometimes-ludicrous amount of bullshit it entails, because it gives me the opportunity to see, firsthand, the process by which our nation grows and thrives.

I have looked America in the eye, and she is beautiful.