Mr. Obama, don’t draw on my coffee table

Once upon a time, a long time ago in a college town not so far away (Oakland, PA, to be precise), there lived 3 roommates in search of a fourth to help pay the rent. One of the other roomies had graduated and the summer was upon us. We lived in a second floor apartment and since I was the only one with family in town, I was the one who provided the second hand furniture: a brown chenille sofa from my aunt, some nice silk drapes from my grandma and an old coffee table from my mother

We advertised and before long a woman named Mary came to check out the place. She was from Iran. It was just after the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and she was a refugee of sorts. Her parents had sent her to America where she would be looked after by her brother who was a doctor in a residency program in Pittsburgh. I guess at 28, Mary decided she wanted to live on her own. So her brother set her up in our apartment and pretty much left her alone. She was a 28 year old Persian virgin (nothing wrong with that) in an apartment full of, er, *not* virgins. We were astonished by her ignorance on the facts of life so we gave sex ed lessons, but I digress.

She was a good cook and made a Persian version of ratatouille to die for. She did the most erotic dances imaginable, but only in front of the girls. She explained the difference between Arab and Farsi. And she told us all about her family’s farms in Iran with terraced land on the mountain sides and all of the servants. It sounded like she came from a fairly wealthy family.

So, I was surprised when I got the phone bill with a charge of $90.00 for a call to Tehran. When I asked her to write me a check, she said I couldn’t prove she made it. And she wouldn’t clean the kitchen. And she didn’t like it when we brought guys to the apartment because, well, that was something only bad women did. And she drew on my coffee table- with a blue ink Bic banana. But she said it was no big deal because it was old anyway.

One day, I had it out with her in the kitchen. I demanded the money for the phone call and I threatened to call her brother. That got her attention because her living with us was conditional on her brother’s approval. She cried and wailed and said I was being mean because I didn’t like Iranians.

???

Who said anything about being Iranian? We were sympathetic and knew she couldn’t help it that she was probably distantly related to the Shah and didn’t want to wear a chador. That wasn’t the point. She could be black, purple, or green with yellow polkadots. I *still* wouldn’t like her because she drew on the coffee table that had been in my family’s living room since I was a kid.

See, Mr. Obama, it isn’t who you are that turns us off. It’s what you say and do. We are not obligated to like you. YOU are obligated to *respect* US. But it hardly matters now. Your sublet is over and if you don’t move out, *I* will.

Update: The non-parable version of this lesson is available at Anglachel’s Journal in Class Act. Just go read it.