I could not tell if I was dreaming.
You know how it is. You wake up but something about reality doesn’t seem quite right and you think you might still be asleep but you can’t really tell?
I stumbled out of bed and started the coffee machine burbling and collected the newspaper from the front yard.
The sports page told me that the New Jersey Niggers had beaten the Boston Micks.
Some player on the Houston Hebes had accused the San Antonio Spics of dropping their last game to get a higher draft pick.
The league was expanding to Toronto, and since they had already honored African-Americans, Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, they wanted to name a team to honor Native Americans.
They sent out notices to all the tribal leaders, and they told us we could have whatever we wanted: Prairie Niggers, if the New Jersey team did not object, Redskins, Savages, Warriors, Heathens, Braves, Bucks--and of course the cheerleaders would be the Squaws, unless we wanted to modernize the language and just call them the Cunts.
But the tribal leaders voted for a write-in candidate, the Treaties.
Toronto Treaties. It has a nice ring to it.
But the league was puzzled. What kind of a name is that?
“If the United States and Canada want to honor the First Nations,” said the tribal leaders, “honor our treaties.”
And there was a sidebar story. It seems that the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada had heard this and called a joint press conference.
“We had no idea,” they said, “that our countries have violated so many agreements with Native Americans. We have formed a joint commission to recommend how to make it up to the survivors, and we have each proposed legislation tendering a formal apology.”
And it was at that moment I knew I was dreaming.