Whiter Shades of Pale (14 page)

Holds current senior record for the most books carried from the public library.

Birkenstocks with socks are a sign that a woman has completed her reading journey of Germaine Greer, Betty Friedan, and Margaret Atwood.

Though many white people consider competitive sports to be too aggressive and macho for their tastes, there are a few exceptions. The most notable is soccer. For some reason it is wrong to get fired up about a football game, but right to get fired up about a football match. The second sport (term used loosely) in this category is called Ultimate Frisbee or simply Ultimate.

It is important to know that when you hear a white person saying “We should do some Ultimate this weekend” or “I’m so pumped for Ultimate,” they are talking about a sport and not an “ultimate solution” type of race war. Though a quick look at a field full of Ultimate Frisbee players might lead one to surmise that an ethnic cleansing has taken place.

When you first see the sport being played, you will be struck by how amazingly boring it is. Imagine a field of white people running around throwing a Frisbee and trying to catch it in an “end zone.” Sometimes one person “guards” another and that’s the whole game. There is nothing more to explain.

If you look a little closer, you will uncover some surprising things. First, you will never see hippies get more upset than on an Ultimate Frisbee field. It can be jarring to see people who look like they should be playing acoustic guitars yelling at each other about whether Blake stepped out of bounds. Second,
you will notice that Ultimate Frisbee matches are the best place to meet white guys who wear headbands.

Fortunately, Ultimate Frisbee offers a lot of opportunities for personal, professional, and financial gain. Since the sport has yet to be integrated, you could command a high fee in terms of money or favors if you agree to join one of the many white leagues in your area. To a white person, having a diverse Ultimate team is almost as good as winning the championship. Almost.

In addition, white people have also created a sport called disc golf. In this game, you see how many throws it takes to get a disc into a receptacle. There is no other pertinent information about this sport, and its only real value lies in the fact that it is a cheap date for white people who like to be outside.

In any case, if a white person talks to you about a sport that you’ve never heard of, do not be afraid to ask some questions. This is because, on average, white people invent a new sport every six weeks. Hacky sack, sky surfing, cornhole, and group juggling are just a few of the games invented to help white people maximize their time at parks and beaches.

If you found yourself trapped in the middle of the woods without electricity, running water, or a car, you would likely describe that situation as a “nightmare” or “a worst-case scenario like after a plane crash or something.” White people refer to it as “camping.”

When white people begin talking to you about camping they will do their best to tell you that it’s very easy and allows them to escape the pressures and troubles of the urban lifestyle for a more natural, simplified, relaxing time. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In theory, camping should be a very inexpensive activity, since you are literally sleeping on the ground. But as with everything in white culture, the more simple it appears the more expensive it actually is.

Camping is a multi-day, multi-step, potentially lethal activity that will cost you a large amount of both time and money. Unless you are in some sort of position where you absolutely need the friendship of a white person, you should avoid camping at all costs.

The first stage of camping always involves a trip to an outdoor equipment store like REI (or in Canada, Mountain Equipment Co-op). These stores are well known for their abundance of white customers and their extensive inventory of things for white people to buy and only use once. If you are ever tricked into going to one of these stores, you can make white people like you by saying things like “Man, this kayak is only twelve hundred dollars. If I use it thirty-five times I’ve already saved money over renting.” Note: Do not actually buy the kayak.

Next, white people will take this new equipment and load it into an SUV or Subaru Outback with a Thule or Yakima roof rack. Then they will drive for an extended period of time to a national park or campground where they will pay an entrance fee and begin their journey. It is worth noting that white people are unaware of the irony of using a gas-burning car to bring them closer to nature, but it is not recommended that you point this out. It will ruin their weekend.

Once in the camp area, white people will walk around for a while, set up a tent, have a horrible night of sleep, and walk around some more. Then get in the car and go home. This, of course, is a best-case scenario. Worst-case scenarios include: getting lost, poisoned, or killed by an animal, and encountering an RV. Of these outcomes, the latter is seen by white people as the worst since it involves an encounter with the wrong kind of white people.

Conversely, any camping trip that ends in death at the hands of nature or requires the use of valuable government resources for a rescue is seen
as relatively positive in white culture. This is because both situations might eventually lead to a book deal or documentary film about the experience.

Ultimately the best way to escape a camping trip with white people is to say that you have allergies. Since white people and their children are allergic to almost everything, they will understand and ask no further questions. You should not say something like “Looking at history, the instances of my people encountering white people in the woods have not worked out very well for us.”

There are a number of accomplishments held in high esteem by white people: landing a first internship, running a marathon, seeing a band before they get popular, giving birth to a child without the use of drugs, finishing a Victorian novel. But all of them pale in comparison to the greatest accomplishment in all of white existence: losing weight.

The white person’s relationship to obesity is a complicated one. You may have heard white people talking about how much they support overweight ethnic actors that they refer to as “curvy.” But the truth is that this support is merely a karmic offering in hopes that whatever spiritual force controls metabolism will shine its light upon them for their acts of kindness to the heavy.

No matter how much a white person will deny it, there is nothing they fear more than getting fat. So it should come as no surprise that losing weight is held in such high regard. It’s a physical equivalent to the feeling of a first step in the right direction that white people had when they first moved away from their small hometown or suburb.

Most normal people would lose the weight, accept compliments on their new appearance, and let others continue to live their lives as they see fit. Not white people. When a white person loses weight, it becomes
their mission to make everyone around them feel bad for eating or drinking anything that might be responsible for weight gain.

This is not done out of any particular concern for the health or well-being of the people around them, but rather as an attempt to ruin whatever pleasure someone might have gleaned from a bottle of beer or a delicious sandwich.

If you come from a culture that is known for being particularly thin, you can always have some fun with white people by telling them that you can eat whatever you want provided that you drink a certain type of tea afterward. You really don’t even need to offer up more of an explanation than “The tea prevents the fat from being absorbed” and they’ll believe it! Not only will you have a fun time watching the white person gain weight, but you will clear some outstanding margins on your new tea sales business.