I am a member of that odd group of people who grew up all over the place and got the name “third culture kid.” My father was a foreign service officer. I was born in New Zealand and lived in the States, Jamaica, Iceland and Belgium. The father of my three kids was French and I lived in India for a good ten years. That is my “third culture” curriculum vitae. Other people like me will have grown up in Japan, then Iran, and then Argentina….that sort of thing. We have in common though, that as children, we were going along, minding our own business then all of a sudden got picked up and catapulted into some other reality. It was rough but enlightening. (I suppose.)

After being an American, my next big cultural identity is French. I majored in it in college. I lived in Paris. My children’s father was Parisian and I learned to speak Parisian argot. Two great words in that special slang are, “l’arnaque” and the the word for the victim of “L’arnaque,” “le pigeon.” The swindle and the poor pigeon.

In my last article I wrote about being eyed by hungry swindlers who hope to pluck a fluffy white feather or two from my pigeony carcass. “DE SCAMMA DEM!” is what they are called in my current culture of Jamaica, which I have always loved and continue to do.

The government is finally fixing the road that goes from Port Antonio to St. Thomas to Kingston all around the eastern nose of the island. They are digging everything up to lay water pipes right now and making an awful mess! The taxi men demonstrated about it last week. Getting from my place, Sherwood Forest, into Port Antonio is a real undertaking. Especially for me, a person no longer in her youth. It is hot and the air conditioning doesn’t work on our car. Parking in Jamaica is complicated and dangerous, too.

The day in question, I had gone to the library in Port Antonio to use the internet. It was hot there and you have to wear a mask. I further walked around town on an errand. On the way home I stopped at Mr. Chili’s hardware store to buy paint. My last stop was Ramtullah’s, the supermarket.

Pretty much on my last gasp, as I pulled into the parking lot and into a space, an anonymous looking masked man leaped out of my way and I thought, “Oh my God! Did I hit him?” My second thought was, “he is one of de scamma dem!”

“You realize,” said he, sidling up to me. “You realize that you bounced the back of my leg.”

All right, anonymous, masked, scamma-man. My patience was done. I turned on him my baleful gaze. “YOU ARE LYING!” I told him. “I NEVER TOUCHED YOU! DO YOU TAKE ME FOR AN IDIOT?!”

I was pleased to see him immediately deflate. He withdrew mumbling and griping. I suppose he would have made some comment about privileged white ladies if that was part of his culture, which fortunately it was not. Mumbling and griping myself but feeling modestly triumphant, I did my shopping, left the parking lot and turned out on to the wrong side of the road to head home. Fortunately, the car heading straight for me was polite and kind and probably thought, “poor old dear must be from America.”