The Pecking Order

I was at the new Causeway version of Beirut, which is as consistent if not more breezy than the one in the banking district, when a family entered and was seated at the large table next to us. I watched as the parents and three small boys were accompanied by two maids in white nurse outfits, each carrying large handbags filled with what looked and sounded like garden tools.

As they were seated, the one maid reached into her pocket and pulled out a box of juice, which she then offered to the child jumping atop a chair. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt with a large patch of the number one sewn on its breast and when he tasted the juice, he swallowed it the way you might swallow a bottle of barium sulfate, which is to say, unsolicited. He then threw the box of juice on the floor, screaming, “Oh my god, what is this? Urine?”

I don’t know if it was his brazenness that surprised me as much as the articulate way he spoke, almost as if he was an old, conservative man reduced for the afternoon to the body of a tyke.

I would have continued observing this interaction had the two other boys not wandered over to the waiter’s touch-screen register and order something like 57 falafel platters. The second maid and I caught each others eye and smiled as if to say, “they’re just so…playful!”

Amidst all of this, the parents had already settled into their first alcoholic beverage, a glass of white wine for her and a Balboa beer for him. The father wore a Ralph Lauren polo shirt and the mom wore a fancy dress which looked silly and tryhard at a place like Beirut. They seemed to be lost in each others’ conversation until the first glass fell from the other end of the table. I say first because the kids broke four water glasses that afternoon, three by accident and one wholeheartedly intentional. This was just for the time that I was there.

“Ay Gladys, help us please. Get some waiter to clean up that mess,” the mom said, “and ay, nena, please control the boys. There are people trying to have nice afternoon meals here.” Gladys nodded and then turned to pass on the glass chore to the nearest bus boy. I could tell she enjoyed delegating this responsibility since, should the same thing have happened at home, she’d so obviously be held accountable.

We all like to talk about Panamanian class distinction and the obvious lack of upward mobility, but we’re missing what it can teach us about even the lowest players on the chain. Everyone in Panama obeys someone else. The parents control the boys who control Gladys who controls the busboy who, when he goes home, probably controls his wife, who controls her kids who control their comparatively-less-alpha friends who control their pets (which is when the whole social structure leaps into the infinite and mostly uninteresting kingdom animalia).

I admit that part of my fascination here comes from the fact that everyone’s always tried to convince me the benefits of equality. The Golden Rule was a seminal lesson for any kid in the States and I suppose it shapes the way we reflect upon class structure. It wouldn’t be fair, obviously, for me to say that any one culture is wrong so I’ll just say that in Panama it’s really kinda sad.

The family at Beirut made for an irreplaceable show even though you’ll see them in many of Panama’s social surroundings. Not this family exactly, of course. But a rendition of them so entrenched and indoctrinated in Panama’s status ladder that they’re oblivious to what those next to them might happen to be thinking.

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