Google it already!!

We realize that we tend to rant more than rave about Marabs. Don't worry, we'll get around to the raves too... it's just that, for the most part, the rants are more fun to write, and particularly more therapeutic. Trust us, we love Marabs, but constantly navigating their cultural, social, and physical worlds takes a toll on us, which is why we have to rant. Some of our rants are legitimate warnings to those who might follow in our footsteps. Collectively, we have several years of experience dealing with Marabs, and many of us learned some hard lessons in the beginning (see Beware of "The King"). Other rants are more for the fun of pointing out things we find funny about hanging out with Marabs. This is one of those funny things we've noticed.

If you spend any amount of time with Marabs -and we do- pretty soon you will realize that they refer to you on any question about America. Not just America, actually, they refer any question on anything to you, and expect that you, by your very American-ness will be the utmost authority on any subject. The subjects, of course, tend to be far from rocket science: "what time does (insert store/restaurant here) close?" "How much does (insert item here) cost?" "Why do Americans (insert stupid action here)?" "How much will insurance on my (insert really expensive brand-new car here) cost?" and our personal favorite: "Why is Hardees called Carl's Junior on the West Coast?" (Seriously, all of us have been asked this question more than a few times!)


Don't let this expert status go to your head! You really aren't an expert in everything, even if it's nice to be treated that way for awhile. You have several options:

• If you know the answer, you can tell them as you would with anyone.
• If you don't know the answer, you can tell them you don't know OR
• You can totally bullshit the answer with the utmost confidence that you are the foremost authority on the subject. 

Depending on how comfortable they are with you, and what kind of Marab they are, their reaction to your reply will follow one of these patterns:

• They will accept your answer as if it came from the foremost authority on the subject.
• They will automatically reject your answer because, after all, you are a woman and what do you really know about anything... even though THEY asked YOU. 
• If you tell them you don't know the answer, they will look at you as if you just lost your American-ness, OR
• They will follow up with 100 similar questions, as if they are attempting to somehow trick the answer out of you. They know you're really just trying to keep all that knowledge out of their hands! 
• Most likely of all - They will argue with your answer. It doesn't matter if you have a PhD in the subject and they only just learned the word for it today -they will still argue about it with you. There are a few reasons for this: 
• Culturally, they just argue a lot. Watch them play cards, say a game of baloot, within five minutes they will be arguing who put this card down, how did this person get this card, who's father is a pimp, who's uncle is a donkey, ect... 
• Second, they bullshit so much of the time that they believe that everyone else is bullshitting too. Therefore, even if you knew the answer, they assume that you just made it up -even though THEY asked YOU for the answer! This probably explains why, culturally, they argue a lot. 

Eventually, you will come to the conclusion that they only asked you the question so that they could argue with your answer. Ok, sometimes this is fun -just play along with it. Other times, it becomes too much; it is so annoying! When you feel yourself reaching the breaking point with all this nonsense, just suggest the oh-so-obvious solution that they would never come to on their own -GOOGLE IT!!!!!