Such a Perfect Day

Everything was set.  Lola's piñata was stuffed with new toys.  The weather was beautiful.  My family brought gifts for her and was chilling in the sunny yard with beers, playing with Lola.
I heard music and was surprised, and thrilled, to see my sister's car pulling up.

"Happy first birthday!" she yelled.
"Here's your present!".  She whipped out an old bra and swung it in circles over her head and threw it.  Lola went wild.

It was a perfect day. 

I laid my head on the table in the unemployment office.  Every little glitch, which is always their fault, requires my presence and a long wait in the run down building in a strip mall on the west side. 
I had been waiting on my appeal hearing.  I even got someone to cover my class so that I could do the hearing on the phone.  I paced outside of the school, waiting for the call.  It came, fifteen minutes late, to tell me that someone didn't show up to do the hearing and that it would be rescheduled.  And somehow, I got chastised again for not answering on the first ring. 

I was tired.  I half listened to an African-American couple shoot the shit while I waited.  They had been talking a while.  An, older, sharply dressed gentleman came and sat close to them.  He wore a full suit and bow tie.

"My hair is really long when I straighten it" the woman told the man that she had been chatting with.  She had a long-ish afro pulled back in a head band. 
"You should leave it like it is" the suit man interjected. 
"Sheep are curly haired.  Goats have straight hair.  Negros are the only humans with curly hair.  Why would you want to look like a goat?  White women look like goats.  Goats:  some monkey dog thing. Them and white people have straight hair.  Satan wants you to straighten your hair".

He was a few feet away from me and probably noticed that I was white, as I was the only white person in the sea of applicants at the unemployment office.  I was amused.  So I'm a fucking goat now, old timer?

The couple nodded politely, silently, the way everyone does when confronted by a weirdo.  Slavery came up between them somehow. 
"I am Nigerian" suit man stated proudly.
"Born here of Nigerian parents" Elijah Muhammad continued.
"I was not enslaved".
He got up abruptly.

"We were not all in his situation" the male member of the couple muttered. 
"And since then and even before then, we've been our own worst enemy".
I mentally disagreed with him.  

"Hilary" the woman at the desk called out, finally.

I sprinted over.