On Being a Human Cliche

All right, all right.  When one of your grown kids mentions a blog and says, “It explains everything about my childhood,” what are you going to do?  You have to check it out.

The blog is Stuff White People Like and it’s wickedly funny.  To clear up any misconceptions in advance, it isn’t about skin color; it’s about a certain class of earnest, liberal, uber politically correct, would-be intellectuals and the values they hold dear.

Signs that you belong to this particular group of strivers include a wholehearted devotion to the Sunday New York Times, NPR, study abroad, vintage T-shirts and the HBO series The Wire.  You also hated high school, because you weren’t considered cool (since, you like to think, you were far too deep); you loathe multinational corporations; you profess great enthusiasm for soccer, even though you know nothing about it; and you’d rather be roadkill than drive an SUV.  You live, of course, in a renovated, older house, hang out at film festivals, and drive a foreign car.

Enough, I think.  Enough!  If you just count today, I woke up in our renovated house, which was built in 1941(#37), listening, as usual, to NPR (#44).  I wandered downstairs to read The New York Times (#46) and drink Free Trade coffee (#1).    My husband had already left for work (at a non-profit, #12) in his Toyota Prius (#60).  I went to lunch at a sushi restaurant (#42), where I used chopsticks (a skill acquired during a trip to Japan, #19) and talked to an old friend about how we supported Obama (#8).  One of my favorite writers is David Sedaris (#25) and I was still kind of tired after going to the SXSW Film Festival (#3) and watching the taped finale of The Wire (#85).  Later today, I’ll go to yoga (#15).

All these years — and my husband and I thought we were creative and unusual.  But, no.  We are, as it turns out, a big, fat, white-people cliche.  In fact, we’re such a perfect fit for the White People blog that I’ve begun to suspect it’s our kids who are writing it.  That would make sense.  After all, as I may have mentioned upon occasion, we have gifted children (#16) who have studied abroad (#72).

Please, whatever you do, don’t take this as ironic.  That particular tone is covered in #50.  I’d like to think I do something original now and then, so I’m going to have to avoid the White People blog so I can regain the remnants of my shattered self-esteem.

P.S. Oh — and I’d like to suggest an addition to the White People list, which now numbers 89 entries.  How about white people who gratuitously use foreign words and phrases.  Like ciao!, for example.  Which I’ve never said in my life.  Honestly.  Good-bye.

1 comment… add one
  • Wow. I’m not particularly White. I may just be white.

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