Most of the picnic tables here are built about several inches too
high, so that if you sit on the bench your legs dangle and you're
leaned forward too much. If you sit on the top of the table and put
your feet on the seat, the geometry works out and you have a nice
place to sit. Not too mention your feet are safe from, say, fireants.
But for some reason people have a really strong objection to you
sitting on a picnic table. I guess it has something to do with buts
going where food does, which makes sense intuitively but is totally
ridiculous in reality, your hands (definitely) and the food itself
(probably) having way more yucky grime and bacteria on them than the
outside of your pants.
The really funny thing is that regular folks aren't shy about being
enforcers. The first few times it happened somebody might have been
wearing a uniform or something, so I wrote it off as your typical non-
authority figure throwing his or her flimsy weight around. But then
some dude with a family comes up. I thought I had him burned and my
seat back, because next he pulls out some flippers and a harpoon
right next to a "no fishing" sign. He insists, though, that the sign
applies to the *other* side of the bay, which is plausible, though he
may just be saying that.
I little flock of white dudes on scooters just drove by, ever so
tentatively. 4 dudes, 4 scooters, which means they chose paying $100/
day extra to avoid the crotch-on-butt of doubles riding. I mean, if
what they're after is to not look like homos they'd use the
accelerator or leggo the brakes for 3 seconds. I thought this post
was going to be about Puerto Ricans, but now something broader is
emerging: a general ass-phobia, is what it is.
