Assimilation Required
Several years ago, while on a Number 7 Train as it snaked its way across western Queens bound for Manhattan, I was distracted from my reading by a cluster of middle-schoolers behind me all jabbering loudly at once. They were speaking English, but in a dialect born in the San Fernando Valley of California in the late 1980s. As the train pulled into the Queensboro Plaza station I finally laid eyes on them. Expecting to see a bunch of white kids one might see in North Hollywood or Tarzana, instead I saw seven thirteen-year-olds whose parents must be from seven different corners of the globe, their children now . . . totally more American than me. I wonder where the next wave of immigrants will come from. Maybe they might be from, like . . . outer space!
On the right my new pal Azketch Pilepoop is caught raiding Jean-Michel’s vintage Norge.
