(*note: tragically, the video below was originally set to "Bust a Move" but YouTube made the poster change the music to this wack porn movie soundtrack ish, which really isn't nearly as funny as it originally was.)
As featured on iconic shows such as Good Times and also too in your wood paneled basement when your folks had friends over for grown folks parties that you used to sneak down and watch in your footsie pajamas? You always wondered why it smelled so funny down there and why mommy didn't talk to daddy the next day at the breakfast table? Thinking about that makes me think about the glorious Thelma and my mother's supreme afro which literally was a whole foot tall. By the way, Miss Thelma is seriously holding it down, check out this then and not-too-long-ago comparison...she's about 55 I think:
Anyway another kind of bump was recently brought to international attention. The Fist Bump. Apparently this is some sort of militant but cool gesture that black people do to each other. Pardon me but I didn't know that. I thought fist bumping was just in the occasionally used hand gesture repertoire. As in, without an ethnicity attached to it. But it just so happens the Obamas did it on TV at a key moment, and everyone got all excited like it was something special or even revolutionary. Really, wasn't all that hoopla a bit absurd? I think The New Yorker captured the essence of the absurdity quite well in its cover.
This phenomenon has filtered into my personal life in more ways than one, unfortunately, with all kinds of randoms fist bumping me all over the place. Ow, that HURTS! There are several examples but the most interesting recent one is an excursion I had with a couple of girlfriends.
I was down in the Magic City over New Years and went out to a bar/club on Brickell with a couple of my girls who live down there. One is Dominican, one is Puerto Rican. I mention that to illustrate that I was the only black girl in the group. In fact I was probably the only black person in that entire place that night. Which is totally cool for me...but makes other people act funny sometimes.
So we get approached by a young fella in town from South Dakota who had spontaneously flown in that morning after temperatures reached sub zero out there. Plus I suppose he was a bit lonely since only like 3 or 4 people live in South Dakota. Anyway he was REALLY EXCITED TO BE THERE. So he chatted us up a bit. Didn't really offer to buy any drinks though, so he obviously doesn't know how things work in Miami. But anyway...he starts chatting and making absolutely inane conversation which really was making me quite sleepy. Somewhere along the way as he got progressively drunker he kept fist bumping me to accentuate his sentences for a total of about 100 fist bumps at the end. It went something like this:
Boy from South Dakota: Wow the weather here is great, isn't it?Me: Yep, much warmer than in New York right now.Boy from South Dakota: Totally. [Fist bump]Me: Uh, ok.
Get it?
So after we peeled ourselves away from perhaps the most thrilling evening of our collective lives we deconstructed what happened in the car on the way home...
Puerto Rican friend: Aww that guy was so nice, such a cutie patootie.Dominican friend: I don't know, he seemed a little weird.Me: Yeah and what was up with the fist bumps?Puerto Rican and Dominican friends in unison: Que? Fist bumps?Me: Yeah, he was fist bumping me after every sentence, he didn't do that to you?Puerto Rican friend: Nope, he didn't do that to me.Dominican friend: Me neither.Me: Wow. [pause]Me: Do you think he did it because I'm black?Dominican friend: You're black? Let me outta the car!Puerto Rican friend: Yo, I think that's it! [loud ass laughter]Dominican friend: What a loser.Me: Well at least he was trying to connect.
The moral of the story is that fist bumping is appropriate only in very rare instances just like before. Unless I'm your wife and you just nailed your party's nomination for President, let's not fist bump, 'kay?
Tears are rolling down my face that I'm laughing SO hard right now. I swear to God, if a corny white man tries to fist bump me, I will SCREAM.
ReplyDeleteI actually has a problem with Barack and Michelle fist bumping that day. I was like, calm down, be easy y'all, don't let the country know just how ghetto you really are until be get this presidency under our belts! We got some real black folk up in the White House, for real. I HOPE that's turns out to be a good thing. We'll see. Michelle is bound to show her 'round da way' ass sooner or later when one too many secret service men try to tell her how to live her life. I can't wait for her to show her true colors. My girl!