A Case of Mistaken Identity

The Q-mart parking lot is always in a state of transition. When one car passes playing "paysa" music, another replaces it bumping hip-pop followed by the merengue expert in the blue SUV. If you look carefully, this almost happens in tune with the people coming out of Q-mart, one Mexican, one African American, one Cuban. That is, it doesn't always happen, sometimes a White guy passes by and ruins the whole thing because there isn't a fourth guy in a pick-up truck playing country. It's just the setting of the Los Angeles Q-mart where the "incident" happened and, in Los Angeles, people are a little iffy on country music.

I was ten feet away sitting on a bench to the left of the self-opening double doors when the older gentleman exited the Q-mart. He was like seven feet behind a youth in a baseball cap and blue everything. He was, obviously, the person's son. You can sometimes tell from the faces. This one had the man's big ears. For the purposes of this story we shall refer to the older man in the green suit as Mr. Class and to his son as Radar.

A moment later, the man was followed by a Q-mart security, who tapped Mr. class on the shoulder. Character C was in the usual Q-mart attire, ugly red shirt and brown slacks with I-can't-get-a-discount-even-though-I-work-here-shoes. We shall refer to him as The Man.

Their conversation from thereon took twisted turns because people had began to stare and some of the passers by in their fancy cars with their paysa, hip-hop and merengue music had turned the volume down for this. Bad news traveled fast.

"Excuse me," The man said, a frown on his face.

"Whado u wan, eh?" asked Mr. Class, confrontationally. "Y don't touch me."

"What's your name?"

"My name is Pedro Martinez, so what?" asked the old man, in a hoarse sort-of tone. His voice betrayed his nationality. He was obviously better fluent in Spanish.

"What's your name?" asked The Man again, as if in disbelief.

"You wan me to tell you my name or show you my name?"

"We want you to do both," The Man said, in a serious voice.

"Look, that's my son over there, why don't you ask him?"

Here the conversation is cut off from my ear because either static or some form of alliance against the author of un-finished stories causes a dire interruption. After this brief pause and various hellos and goodbyes to insignificant girl who talked to me A and B, my attention to the story was regained.

In this version we have another store attendant speaking to Mr. Class and now his son, whom says,

"My dad doesn't write those checks; he's an honest man."

Apparently, they were blaming the man for falsifying checks and wrongfully from the looks of it. The old man didn't look like the type to be slick enough to even try to get away with such a thing. Plus, it's a Q-mart. You want to say you went to jail because you used a fake check in a Q-mart?

In front of all those people they pointed the poor old man out, who exclaimed suddenly, "You still trying to say I wrote those checks? I don't even bank with those guys. Call the cops, then."

The confrontation ended at that and then the old man realized that I was looking at him and he said to his son as he was leaving the store, "They supposed to be smart but they stupid," then added, "Los cabranoes creen que somos mensos los Chicanos but they got another thing coming," then to me, "Know what I mean, know what I mean?"

I nodded and laughed.