Ok, so if you weren’t reading along, please read the comments on the last post. I think we can all agree, poor Elaine takes the cake with her story. Oh man. I want to hide just thinking about it.
Here are a couple of mine:
I was talking on the phone with a friend from high school who calls me maybe once a year, so we had a lot of catching up to do. We were gossiping about another friend from high school who was dating a kind of celebrity (ok, I suppose he is a real celebrity because probably 80% of you have seen him in movies, but I doubt most of you would recognize his name). That celebrity is a LOT older than us. I think I was maybe 32 at this time and this guy was at least 60. I was making a huge deal about how old that guy was… Older than my dad! Has kids our age! yada yada yada. My friend said things like, “Oh, that age difference isn’t that shocking.” ”As long as she is happy,” whatever, just probably trying to shut me up. I would not be shut up. I went on and on, talking about wrinkly private parts and other unpleasant things one might encounter when dating an old dude. I beat that old dude horse long long after it was dead.
Finally, we moved on to other topics and I asked my friend if she was dating anyone. It turns out she was…a guy who was at least 60 years old with kids our age.
THAT was awkward.
Another one:
The first time I ever slept over with Mr. A, I was drunk. Really drunk. He fell asleep (as I know know he is wont to do as soon as he has even one beer). At this time (I was maybe 21? Yeahhh, let’s say 21 so we can assume I was drinking legally), I had never known another Asian person personally. So when Mr. A fell asleep, I leaned over him in bed, trying to get a good look at his eyes to figure out exactly what it was that makes Asian eyes look Asian. Not surprisingly, when a drunk girl was leaning right over top of his face, Mr. A woke up with a start and asked what the heck I was doing. Totally busted, I was drunk enough to tell him the truth. He just rolled his eyes, rolled over and went back to sleep.
Last one for today:
On a totally different occasion, early in our dating life, probably after I asked him something very basic about being Asian, Mr. A said “Seriously, have you never known any Asian people at all?”
The truth was, I didn’t know any. I grew up in a really rural area where almost everyone was white and the few who weren’t were Black or biracial Black/white. (Not entirely true, I knew two people with one Hispanic parent and one Asian girl who I now know was adopted, but honestly I don’t think it ever occurred to to me that she wasn’t white even though all her cousins were. I know, wtf? I was oblivious.)
Anyway, when Mr. A said that, I wanted to seem more worldly than I was because it is embarrassing to be a hick from the sticks. ”Oh, There are Chinese people where I grew up. They worked at the factory. They were always the best workers because their little hands are better for the kind of machinery they have there.”
A) I had never seen these rumored factory Chinese so I don’t even know if they existed. B) Ah yes, the amazing little Asian hands, wtf AmFam, W. T. F. C) This is how I try to impress someone? Really?
Seriously, I don’t know how Mr. A put up with that kind of dumb bullshit long enough to end up marrying me…he is a good and patient man, that is all I can say.
I can think of example after example of stupid shit I said (usually TO HIM!) about Asians…like the time I realized that our mailman was Asian in San Francisco. I couldn’t get over the whole blue collar Asian phenomena there. In our Midwestern college city, it seemed like all the Asians were either super cool (usually because they were imported from the East or West coast) or getting some kind of crazy fancy advanced degree. But a MAIL MAN?? or even more shocking, a CONSTRUCTION WORKER or working on a ROAD CREW?!??! It blew my poor, sheltered Midwestern mind. And I could not shut up about it.
That poor man ( my then future husband) would just gently tell me I was embarrassing myself (and sometimes him) and let me know why I was out of line/ignorant/racist/whatever. Or he would make fun of me for being so dumb. Eventually, I guess I stopped being so dumb. (Either that or he got tired of telling me! heh)
My original intention with asking you all to contribute stories was to see if we could draw some kind of * Kumbaya – we all learn from our mistakes* kind of conclusion. I don’t know what I was thinking. I am not the person who can wrap this all up nicely and make us all feel human through our shared assholery.
We all screw up. Either someone points it out to us and we A) feel like an ASS and don’t do it again, B) we realize our mistakes on our own, feel like an ASS and don’t do it again; , or C) no one tells us and/or we refuse to listen and we go on with our lives making an ass of ourselves over and over.
I would pick A or B every time.
P.S. While the kumbaya moment was my original feel-good take away from this experiment, I think we all know the real feel-good take away: At least we weren’t the person who thought Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the janitor. (Sorry Elaine!)
