Okay, okay, I know I second-guess myself more than sharpshooters pull pistols in Sam Peckinpah films (and usually with more deadly aim) but I think I just took my neurosis to a new, most-pathetic-even-for-me level.
I had just left home for the mid-laundry shuffle. Wait, I'll back up. The laundromat is about a half block from the apartment, which is great for me. I can dump the stuff in the washer, go walk the dog or do whatever for a half hour, go back, throw it in the dryer, come home, relax, and go back in a half hour to pick it all up. It is so convenient in that city-life, multi-tasking kind of way, It's almost like someone else does my laundry for me.
And today someone almost did. Sort of. When I arrived for the washer/dryer transfer I spied a man pulling my clothes out of the machine and placing them in a basket. My brain clicked; an internal "What the...?" then the pico-second assessment you do when you're trying to decide if something is a threat or benign. There were about ten free washers so my clothes weren't taking up valuable real-estate, yet they were nestled between two washers that were also finished with their cycles, and full of clothes. And the guy wasn't pulling them out in any kind of hurry (like he intended to steal them or something) so I guessed it was just a mistake.
I walked up to him and said, "Hey, I think those are my clothes." He looked at me, then down at the wet pile, then he did the pico-second thing trying to decide what my damage was...followed shortly by realization.
"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," he said, "I didn't even look. My clothes are in that washer right next to yours." It was obvious by the way he held his hands he didn't know what to do at that point...pull the rest out? Put them back?
"Don't worry about it..." I smiled, "It's all good." His face lit too, we were in agreement. Crisis averted, and who knows, perhaps friends made. Either way, nice warm fuzzies all around.
Except for the teenagers a few inches behind him, who were mocking me. One of them started with "It's all good? It's all GOOD?" then a loud HA HA HA doubled up, gut holdin' reaction from his crew. Another answered him in Spanish, but all I could make out of his retort was another, incredulous, "It's all good?" They just couldn't believe I was, am, so unfashionable. (I am the Antigeist, after all).
So there I was, walking home, totally horrified that I had made such a passe, out of date, out of touch comment. How stupid I must have looked, some silly white girl using 15 year old hip-hop vernacular. What a dork, what an ultra-maroon, how Gay.
But, I happen to be a big fan of "It's all good". I've seen 'It's all good' do the work of poets and saints. I've witnessed potentially deadly exchanges between fellow Americans completely diffuse due to 'It's all good'. If you were given the wrong change for a twenty in the 80's, during the "Life Sucks And Then You Die" era, the apologetic clerk would be greeted with "You're goddam right your sorry, you thievin' sorry-ass motherfucker". But today? "No problem, man, it's all good." I ask you, what can possibly be wrong with that? I firmly believe that what you say becomes who you are, and if given the choice between 'this stinks' and 'that sucks' and 'don't go there', or the more accepting and loving 'It's all good', is there really any choice?
I'm fully aware that by the time your white, male, goatee wearing cubicle-mate is using a phrase, its not a part of underground culture anymore....but why should something so simple and perfect be kept underground? What, are you the kind of person who stops buying your favorite indie band's CD's as soon as they get airplay? I'm sorry, but I have to go with folks like Ivy Supersonic on this one.
Posted by Antigeist at February 24, 2003 07:47 PM