A recent conversation…

…with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair who I’m friends with).

She was telling me that she was recently back in London for a wedding, and when I was asking her what it was like, she was saying that the bride is (British-Turkish), “so there were a lot of kids there.”

“Oh…?”, I was like. “Are you saying that those people have a lot of children..?”

And, she didn’t respond in any way whatsoever, to that comment.

Also, when I was telling her about how there were two obnoxious passengers with loud profanity-filled speakerphone conversations on a recent train ride that I’d had – one man even talking about how he was going to beat someone up -- she said that she’s seen more of that recently on the subway in the city that I used to live in, like she has the kids on there and people are “smoking blunts” and just being all like that, and when I said that those are exactly the type of crazy people where you don’t want to say anything at all, because they’re crazy, she was like, “Exactly.”

Some interactions with a (Guatemalan) coworker…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, who I make the “Sunday” jokes with:

1) I’m in the basement scooping out ice cream on a lunch shift, and he says that he’s never had any from the restaurant, and so I scoop out a little bit and drop it in his hand so he can try some.

2) Later that shift, he says he wants to buy some ice cream for the other two (Guatemalans) working that day so that they can have it with their shift-meals between lunch shift and dinner shift, and it turns out that he wasn’t aware that employees get 50% off on everything that they order when they’re working.

3) Like a few days later, the shift has ended and he’s coming out to have lunch and I’m pumping out some jumping jacks that I had left from all the customers who had come in that day, and as he walks by, without even looking at me, he’s like, “Gordo” (“Fat”), and he goes to sit down, so afterwards when I’m by there and he’s already started eating, I stand over him and point somewhere and am like Mira, mira (“Look, look”), and when he goes to look away to look and he’s looking in another direction, I start making big play-motions like I’m rapidly scooping all of his food into my mouth, and when he looks back and sees me, I stop and I’m like, “Cuidado, senor, eso gordo va comer toda tu comida” (“Careful, Mister, this fat man is going to eat all of your food”).

Some memories of my father.

When I was back in my hometown, my father was reminiscing about seeing the Statue of Liberty when coming over into New York harbor on the boat as a boy, and about how the five of them in the family slept in 2 cots, him and his younger brother with their mother, and the eldest brother with their dad, my grandfather.

He was also saying that when he got into school and was very very young, somehow he got told that he could never be president since he was foreign-born, and it made him cry.

(He was like five or six.)

He was also saying that five of his classmates ended up dead in Vietnam, and he actually had his toothbrush packed and was fully ready to go when the recruiter stopped by their house and said that there had been a change in draft ages and so he was no longer scheduled to go.

Rental car happenings...

…when I recently rented a car, to go to a wedding:

1) The car rental agency guy has me initial this contract section about not undertaking any illegal activities in the car, so I ask him if that really happens, and he’s like “Oh yeah,” and then when I ask him what do people do, he’s like, “It’s smoking, mostly,” to which I’m like, “And here I was imagining people starting up portable meth labs.”

2) I’m hungry at the one gas station that I stop at, so I ask the (young) (chubby) (white) counter girl what’s better, the "taco puff" or the "roller bites," and she says they’re both good, but the taco puff is spicier and you have to be sure that you want that, and they also sell these gigantic five pound bags of gummy bears up by the counter, and when I say that I’ve never seen anything like that before, she says that they sell more than you’d think, and they often run out.

Three conversations about unpleasant (South Asian) customers.

Lately I’ve been observing to people that I worry I’m becoming racist against (South Asian) customers.

Like, if they behave normally with restaurant behavior and tipping, I find myself thinking stuff like, “Oh, they’re some of the good ones,” like I’m almost beginning to think that that means that they’re not really (South Asian).

Like, I was saying this to my one high school friend who is now a (divorced) (math) teacher, and he just started laughing, because he had asked me what was new, and that was my response, that I fear I’m becoming racist against (South Asians).

Then, he was like, “So what do they do?”, so I gave him a recent example, of the one (South Asian) (princess-girl) who was like, “Now. NOW.” with ice cream that she didn’t even touch for twenty minutes, all for a two-dollar tip, and his immediate response – and I am directly quoting here – was “Oh my God,” and he just didn’t know what to say, and there was a pause in the conversation.

I was also saying this to my one hometown friend who’s a (hairdresser), and she seemed a little disconcerted, but then she told me this story about how once it was a very busy day at the salon where she works and she had one appointment open on her schedule and she looks and suddenly it’s filled with an online booking, and when it gets to be that time, this guy comes in, and he’s (South Asian), and it’s the only (South Asian) customer that she’s ever had, and he was super demanding about what he wanted done where with his hair etc. etc. etc., and then it’s finally done, and, no tip.

So she didn’t say it, and she obviously didn’t want to be racist, but that was also her experience, and it was like she was telling me through that anecdote, implicitly, that she was open to like how there maybe could be some problem there.

I was also saying this to my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker, and she was trying to comfort me that no, I’m not racist, and to do this she had this very unusual rationale, since she was like, “But they are like that everywhere in the world,” and to illustrate this, she told me this story she had just come across on Instagram or through someone she knows, where a barista in Australia had this incredibly insistent (South Asian) customer who wanted them to make a latte with no milk.

“You can’t do that!”, she was like. “A latte with no milk is an americano!”

But, the (South Asian) guy was super insistent, and it was just “a thing.”

Some local farmers.

At the one farmer’s market in the one (college town) that I now live in, there’s this (older) (free-spirited) (vaguely biker) couple who sell “organic inspired” produce they grow themselves as a side hustle – she’s otherwise a cashier at a grocery store across town, and I suspect he mainly does something else, too – and I sometimes buy things from them.

And, one day we were chatting, and she was telling me how tired she was, and I asked why, and it turns out that they get up at 3am on market days, and because sometimes I stay up too late after my late job, I told her that last night a good novel was actually keeping me up and I stayed up way past my bedtime until like 3:30am, so when I was actually in bed and turning my light out last night, her and her partner were actually already up and getting ready for the day.

And, she thought that was something, as did I.

Another week they had a different kind of radish, these small rubber-banded bundles of what almost looked like little horseradishes.

“What are these?”, I was like.

“Icicle radishes,” she was like.

“So what are they like?”, I was like.

“Actually, we just started growing them, so I don’t know,” she was like.

“Hmmm,” I was like, and then, I added them to my pile of stuff that I was gathering and needed to pay for.

“I guess if you don’t see me next week, you’ll know what happened,” I was like.

And, at that, she just gave out this single smoke-strained laugh and was like, “Ha!”, and then she made a few big scooping play-motions towards the radish-pile, and was like, “Here, have more.”

A new joke…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, that I’ve begun making whenever my one (newer) (taller) (Thai) coworker wears this (tasteful) black t-shirt that has some logo with AMSTERDAM on it:

[I say some variant of how freshmen from the local university are going to come in, see that shirt, and ask her where they can buy pot].

. . .

(The first time I said this, she was like, “My brother bought me this shirt!”, and I was like, “Okay, then the kids will ask you to ask your brother, where they can buy pot.”)