Here's a draft of a new comedic essay that I'm working on. Let me know what you think of it so far.
Why there is No Room for “Tolerance” in Contemporary Racial and Religious Relations in
In light of current happenings in the world—The War in Iraq, Islamic Extremists, Popes given speeches about historical evils (apparently not those evils involving children), U.S. border control, Illegal American immigrants, and homogenous civil rights issues that stem from the dawn of our great country—it seems America’s way in which it educates its people on racial and religious “tolerance” may need some updating: for one, throw out the word “tolerance.”
The word just doesn’t seem to fit when it comes to the education of racial and religious relations. Has anyone ever had to “tolerate” anything for a given period of time that in the end they weren’t happy to be rid of? Name one thing pleasurable that a person may have to tolerate.
I bet no one’s ever had to tolerate an orgasm.
A man’s never had to say “look honey, I don’t like it, but I’ll do it cause I love you. Then, just two minutes later, the woman: “don’t worry about it. It happens all the time. Just think of all of the toe curling, spin tingling, knee quivering sensation I’d have to ‘tolerate’ if you were an adequate lover.” It doesn’t seem very plausible, does it?
No one’s ever said, “Get your hands off me! I can’t tolerate this full body therapeutic massage stuff any further. How long’s a Freak’in hour anyway?!”
One thing, from my own personal experience, that I’ve had to “tolerate” was a dentist that resembled a standing black floor lamp in a white coat chuckle the words “you’re a big guy, aren’t ya?” Just as he got his other foot onto the dentist chair on the other side of my thighs—the forceps in his hand still clasped to an infected tooth in the upper right side of my mouth—and he leaned back as if attempting to scale a wall to get to a better place where they’ve never heard of cavities, his long white coat falling backwards like it could be the cape of the great Plaque Crusader! Then, I had to “tolerate” his smirk as he looked up at me from the floor holding the forceps high, so I could get a glimpse of the victim he rescued from the torture that was my mouth. Now that, my friend, is toleration.
Or how about when the convenience store is out of someone’s personal brand of cigarettes, but they need that nicotine so they are forced to “tolerate” another brand.
What about when a man in front of another man in line at a doughnut shop, purchases the last strawberry jelly doughnut after the man behind him continuously and blatantly expressed to his friend beside him the whole wait about his current, almost, need for a strawberry jelly doughnut that had been plaguing him since he’d woken up that morning. Then the man, after having his jellied dreams drip out onto a floor of despair that laid between himself and the counter that now currently held no order he could make, had to “tolerate” watching that man leave with what had become to him sacrosanct, because even if he protested there would be no way for him to prove that the man heard him while they were both standing in line. He knew you wanted that jelly doughnut.
Therefore with this view of the word tolerance in mind, we can only hope that it will no longer have any place in contemporary race and religious relationships. We have to teach the human race to love each others differences, or at least like them as a friend, or maybe simply deal with them for the sake of orgasm; at least the latter works for the sexes.
posted by Jason at 6:17 PM
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