Pink Panties

Wisconsin might as well be Michigan, or Indiana, or Illinois, or Minnesota. Most states are slight variations on the states next to them, falling under the umbrella of the USA, and all existing within a shell of insulation reinforced by product placement, Budweiser commercials and mind numbing excess. Ohio is Michigan without the cars. Minnesota is Wisconsin without the cheese. But be damned sure you will find in each and every one of those four states an ample supply of Applebee’s restaurants, movie theatres and fat smokers.

Nothing justifies anti-American sentiment like driving through the Midwest. Halfway through Wisconsin on my way to Minnesota I stopped for lunch at Panera Bakery. Even though I was 200 miles from Chicago, all it took was opening a door for me to feel like I was back on familiar ground. The layout was the same, the menu was the same and my order was the same. After lunch I got back in my car to drive the 100 ft from Panera Bakery to Best Buy where the familiar feelings were repeated. I then got back into my car to drive another 150 ft to Starbucks where I was greeted by the exact same store layout I had entered earlier that morning in Chicago at the corner of Clark and Berwyn.

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t walk to Starbucks or Best Buy, and Bill Bryson explains it much more articulately in his book A Walk in the Woods but let me try to paraphrase: It is nearly impossible to be a pedestrian in America. Parking lots and shopping centers are set up to make you drive from building to building and if, heaven for bid you decide to walk across the 6 lane freeway separating you from a frozen latte, you will receive such scathing stares and blaring honks that you will certainly never try it again.

Everything is jumbo in Suburbia, the sodas, the stores, the shoppers. When I picked up my rental car yesterday afternoon, the woman at Alamo gave me a choice between a Monte Carlo or a Malibu, both called full-sized cars. When I asked if I could have a smaller one she said that I wouldn’t save any money with a smaller car so I might as well take a full-sized. It never occurred to her that I didn’t need all that room, that it wasn’t necessarily about savings but about waste. My medium coffee cup slid from side to side in the Malibu’s jumbo cup holders. I slid around in my jumbo seat.

I paid my last toll in Wisconsin on good ol’ 94, handed the guy my money and asked how he was. Not bad he said. Good day, lots of hot chicks.
“I’ve already had a panty shot today,” he added, holding my change away from me. “She pulled up and I was back like this just hanging and boom, short skirt and pink panties!”

I knew where this was going, next he’d tell me all about what he’d done had she stepped from her SUV into his little toll box. How he would have rocked her all day long. I wasn’t having it and he could see it on my face, so he handed back my change and resumed his blank stare, ready to take the next $1.50 from the car behind me, his gaze already on it’s driver and another shot at love.