Crowd of White People: A Pantaloon Man's Dream

Dealing with street vendors is an everyday struggle in Saint Louis, especially for a foreigner. These are the people who have small shops of goods on the road or just lay their wares on the sidewalk and try to entice people to come and buy. Some are nice and will let you be on your way when you say you don’t want anything, but others are not so kind. Occasionally, they will follow you and try to stop you and invite you to their shop and they simply won’t listen to you when you tell them you don’t want anything. Sometimes, someone who owns a shop will be nowhere near it and will strike up a conversation with you on the street. Then after a few minutes, they invite you to their shop and you discover the whole conversation was just a feigned friendship in hopes that you would buy something off them. It’s difficult sometimes, because there are genuinely nice people who you meet on the street who want to be your friend and spend every day in the same area, so if you have to pass by them everyday, you want to be on good terms. I tried just avoiding everyone at first, but I accidentally ignored a couple of my friends from the volunteer center and occasionally a student. My new strategy is to adopt foreign nationalities. I’ve been American, Spanish, and German so far. It seems to work. They try to talk to me in French, I say I am one of those nationalities then they usually switch to elementary English, which I pretend to not understand, or claim to be German or Spanish, since no one here really speaks those languages. It’s gotten tricky though, because I don’t really remember all the street vendors I have to dodge, so occasionally I’ve switched nationalities with some of them, and they are puzzled, but if you act it with enough confidence, it is easy to get away. Once when someone tried to pull me over to his shop and was just being really rude and belligerent, I told him that I had a shop too, and that I wanted him to come look at my things. He looked puzzled and left me alone after that. I think confusing them is the best countermeasure.

There are also some street characters in Saint Louis that you come to see everyday walking the same path. There is a crazy man who wanders around one area of town known by the volunteers as the “mango monster”. He likes to yell at people that come near him, and he always tries to touch you. We’re pretty sure his diet consists solely of mangoes. There are always bits all over his face and clothes, and he is usually eating one when he tries to run his fingers through your hair. Another street character who unfortunately has a cart directly across the street from the school where I work, is the pantaloon man. As his name suggests, he sells pantaloons, but in kind of a strange way. Whoever taught him English failed to tell him that people don’t really call pants “pantaloons” anymore. He also speaks just enough English to sound creepy, and talks to you as if he is trying to covertly sell you drugs. The first time I met him, I was a little afraid. He told me in a very quiet voice, “Hello, my friend. You come to my shop. I show you my pantaloons.” To which I replied, “Umm….no thanks, I don’t need any pantaloons.” Then I thought about my statement, and realized that it was incorrect. Everyone needs pantaloons. Imagine a world where we didn’t, so I rephrased my answer. “I mean, I have all the pantaloons I need, thank you.” His English was not very good so he interpreted my statement to say I did, in fact, need pantaloons, so what resulted was more confused discourse about the needing of pantaloons, equivalent to an Abbot and Costello routine. Sometimes I am fortunate and a group of tourists is in the area. Then when the street vendors confront me, I tell them “I’m actually not a tourist and I actually live here, but there is a big group of white people right over there!” Then they dash off after the tourists who no doubt can’t resist spending 20 dollars on a wooden statue or a set of pantaloons.