Misperceived In America OR Camels, Leprechauns and the deputy-sheriff's wife, oh my

In that night, as part of the American marathon trip my friend Idan and I took that included seeing some thirty odd states in some two and a half months, we drove our way through Florida to get to Miami. Now, even the ‘See Florida’ campaign doesn’t include the area we were at that night. It was Florida, and yet – nothing to see. No mouse, no girls in Bikini (and sometimes without) on the beach, no space shuttles, not even elderly Jewish people who can’t figure out a voting ballot. Actually, there is probably a fairly good chance we were the first and only Jewish people in that town who didn’t rush through the town to get to Bingo night. It was November 1996.

We just got there driving straight from Atlanta the whole night. You see, we thought we came up with the genius plan of actually driving all night, checking into a motel in about 7am, get a night sleep, wake up, stroll around whatever town we were in, and get another night’s sleep for the price of one. So we were able to very Israelically-like ‘screw the system’ and get more out of it. Of course, we risked our lives by driving straight for some 14 hours throughout the night, but man – saving some $27 for a motel night was really worth it (it wasn’t that bad really – no cockroaches – even they had standards).

After the much recommended 4 hour sleep in the morning (after which, the plan didn’t look that appealing anymore, so we did this only about 5 more times that trip) and a stroll around town, we decided to do our laundry in the local Laundromat. Already, quite a foreign idea to us (we grew up where laundry came from cloth lines in the window or the yard – you know, like movies about the 30s in New York…); we walked in quite confused.

After much figuring things out and after sacrificing a couple of white socks to the pink gods, we put in another batch when a woman that seems around very early 20s with some 3 children started talking to us. Now, it’s not that I want to pre-judge, but it’s been some 8 years now, so I’ll post-judge. Feeling like walking into a movie, this woman (I want to say Charlynn here), seemed to be a Jerry Springer refuge. I could have sworn that there was a Yee-haw waiting to come out with any sentence. She was the deputy sheriff’s wife – I mean, you can’t make that up nor can it get better than that. One of her first questions to us was our religion, which I already found odd. You meet someone new and your first question is – ‘so… Muslim eyh?’ Or ‘so do you do the whole Vishnu thing?’

Anyway, my friend quickly responded we were Jewish. That triggered a response that I would recognize again in the future – a complete awe as if we just mentioned we were actually Leprechauns. In an amazing combination of a subtle and yet rude retreat she disappeared to another side of the Laundromat.

Idan and I sat waiting for the machine, watching the woman chasing what seemed to be continuously multiplying number of children. Much like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, each time she was able catch one child and stop him from wrecking havoc, the other two seemed to multiply and create even more chaos.

For two full load cycles, she was running around the place, passing us a few times, until she gave up on her trying, her children and her racism, sitting next to us hard of breath.”So… where are you from exactly, boys?” she asked as she was looking at her rascals running around.
“From Israel” I replied. This created a 180 degrees u-turn in her attitude. I don’t believe that in her mind there was any correlation between being Jewish and being from being Israel. At that point, her attention completely switched from her children to us.
“No kidding” she said thrilled. “Were you in the army?”
Part confused, part proud Idan said: “Yes. We were both in the army for three years”.
“So you had guns and shot A-rabs and all?” If this was a movie, it would have been too unbelievable and over-the-top.
She continued asking us questions about the army, manifesting an alarming knowledge of guns for a person who had never been in the armed forces herself.
After covering the army, she summarized it all with an enthusiastic “Wow, the army, huh?” We nodded quietly. “And when you go back to Israel will you be working not in the army?”
“That’s right”, I said.
And then, after this whole conversation, she asked a question that would in some ways define many future interactions I had in the United States. “So, do you use camels to go to work?”

Idan and I were both speechless. A first for Israelis anywhere. Idan tried to patiently explain to her for the next 15 minutes that Israel is very modern with highways, and Internet and financial markets and high-tech industry (and yet, the chosen people never mastered the Laundromat thing). But that was the equivalent of convincing her that us leprechauns were actually pink and tall.

Indeed, I witnessed different sophistication levels in different areas of the U.S. and with different people, but this experience - the disconnect in her mind between being Jewish and being from Israel, as well as her question, repeated itself in a surprising amount of times in different variations. Just the overall concept of it is enough to amaze – she did think we ‘go to work’. She didn’t ask if we work in the fields, or if we hunt Zebras in the wild. She did have the concept of some kind of Western-like work, but that we used camels to get there. And camels. Not horses, or even bicycles. Camels.

For the record – Idan tried to explain to her that both of us actually never rode a camel in our lives. Now that I think about it, it wouldn’t be so bad – probably take care of a lot of traffic problems and the west’s dependence on oil. You think maybe this is the secret of Saudi Arabia and all – using Camels instead of cars and selling all that extra oil to the west?

We eventually left the Laundromat and had some crazy / interesting story to tell back home. But that whole experience was the first in a long sequence of such encounters. In many ways, this is how many Americans – sophisticated and ‘sophisticated-challenged’ still see myself and others – camel-riding foreigners.
Riding camels to work? A few years later in Israel I ended up driving an old Subaru to my University and to work. Kind of ironic...