Tag Archives: Becoming American

We can’t be friends if your name is Doug

Since I have started telling you English words that I simply have a hard time pronouncing, I thought I’d mention this:

What is up with the name DOUG?

I tried and tried and so far I don’t think I’ve managed to pronounce this name correctly. It sounds somewhere in the spectrum between “dog” and “da-g”. People are always going, “Huh? Dog? What?” Seriously? If I am talking about a person, WHAT OTHER NAME is there that sounds remotely like DOG other than DOUG?

One of the guys living in our street is named Doug. So far I have been referring to him as “so and so’s husband” and “so and so’s dad”. If I have to get his attention, well, I hope that day never comes because I really don’t want to be calling him “DOG!”

Yes, I am obsessed. It really bothers me that somehow I cannot master such a simple word. When I go to a social occasion, I actually consciously hope that nobody I meet there is named Doug. And keeping my fingers crossed, so far, nobody at work has this name. KNOCK ON WOOD! It would not look good if I constantly refer to a colleague as “Dog”. HR will come-a-calling soon.

You can get this shirt along with the others from, where else? Cafe Press, the purveyor of .... everything Doug

Next Up: Why I never order VANILLA ice cream or request MANILA folders…

Missing a hole here

33 Replies

I woke up to a bad allergy attack this morning:

runny nose
sneezing
itchy, watery eyes
itching of the nose or throat

p.s. I just copied that litany from the back of my bottle of Zyrtec.

I’ve got them all. As I was using up the last tissue from the giant Kleenex box, I was contemplating tweeting about it. (Yes, I do compose tweets in my head as I go about my daily business. Shut up! Don’t tell me you don’t. Liar!)

Something to the fact of:

Bad allergy! Every hole on my face has liquid coming out of it!

I slay myself sometimes.

This imaginary tweet reminded me of the common Chinese phrase for describing a brutal death (e.g. from poisoning or from a freakishly ginormous renegade Shaolin monk clapping his Thunderous Fists over your ears in a mortal combat) :

Bleeding from seven holes 七孔流血*

Here is an illustration:

This guy is dying from Psychic Powers.

PSA: Do NOT search for images with keywords “七孔流血” or worse, “nose bleed manga” at work. It is like a codeword for “Show me pornographic images please”. Srly, people? The above is like the only image not involving a scantily-clad lass.

Since I am such a math geek (Har har) I automatically counted out the seven holes (and I swear I did not point my fingers to my body parts as I did this…)

My two eyes
My two ears.
My nose.
My mouth.

Hey, that’s only SIX. WTF? So I started thinking of other holes there could be…

Oh.
No.
Could it be that?
No…?
Or that?
Hmmmm.

Then it hit me. Of course! There are TWO nostrils. Duh.

As I opened up a new box of Kleenex, I thought to myself, “I am sucking more and more at being Chinese. And you people really have a bad influence on me!”

—The End—

* Google Translate is so awesome! I typed in “Bleeding from seven holes” and it presented the exact phrase! I *heart* you Google Translate even though you say dumb things sometimes…

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

36 Replies

Jack B referred to The Rocky Horror Picture Show in his comment, and all of a sudden I was transported back to when I first arrived in this country. I started remembering these bits and pieces of my times in the US when I was, for all intents and purposes, an FOB.

You may still remember my tale of landing in the middle of corn field where the Champaign-Urbana airport is located and wondering why everything looked different from the American films I had seen back home. I wanted New York! I knew the Midwest was going to be different. But CORN FIELD as far as my eyes could see? *sobs*

It was the summer of 1993 when temperature routinely reached over 90+ (at least as I recall). As I struggled to my dorm room with my two gigantic suit cases (in one of them I had packed a rice cooker, typical ~~FOB~~ international student behavior), my jaw dropped when the door opened to reveal a tiny, tiny closet masked as a “room” with NO air conditioner. Tears started stinging the corners of my eyes.

It was a nightmare. I had made a mistake.

The International House (or whatever the department that is in charge of the lucrative trade of luring international students who receive no financial aides and pay full price) paired the newly minted students up with volunteers who would introduce these foreigners to the American culture. They forgot, however, that most of the foreign students were GRADUATE students (so perhaps a bit on the geeky side? Definitely not walking on the wild side… ) and the volunteers were all young undergraduates. My “volunteer” showed up at the door of my dorm room and, picture this: Tina from Glee reminded me of her. Only that this girl standing in front of me was a bit more Goth (before I even knew what Goth was and that Goth existed).

We had an uneventful “getting to know you” session at a coffee shop. The conversation was halting at best. Remember: I landed in a strange country less than a week ago and I had no prior experience ~~conversing~~ chitchatting strictly in English. Before we ended our first session, she mumbled something about taking me to a movie. Sure. I am game! But why did she ask me to bring a water gun, toast, and to wear a rain jacket? I was certain I had heard her wrong.

At this point, the memory channel gets really fuzzy. All I remember now is confusion. Lots of it. I remember there was a movie playing in this auditorium that was not particularly clean. I seem to remember that “Tina” was a bit annoyed I had showed up empty-handed. There were people on stage dressed in outlandish costumes. I distinctively remember a guy in revealing women’s lingerie (and yes, it did take me a while to realize that was a man in full makeup and a full wig…) and stuff being thrown at various moments throughout the movie.

Oh. That’s what the TOAST is for.

I was sprayed with water and saw toilet paper rolls fly through the air. I also remember having popcorn dumped on me but that could just be real popcorn for eating at a movie theatre and not part of the Ritual.

Now some guy (Was it the guy in drag? I can’t remember for sure) ~~asked~~ demanded,

Where are the virgins? Give us the virgins! Where are you? Stand up if you are a virgin! Get up here. NOW!

Again, utter confusion as I desperately leafed through the pages inside my head to locate the word “virgin” and its definition.

OOOOOOOHHHHHH.

I was not. I thought.

Think again.

“Tina” pulled me up from my seat and physically delivered me to the stage… I was not a ham the way I am now. I was not at ease at all standing there, spelling out AWKWARD in blinking neon letters with my mere presence. I am pretty sure I was insulted (as demanded by the Ritual) but thank goodness for my lack of verbal English comprehension back then. The audience surely was laughing, slapping their thighs, cat calling.

I think I blanked out this part of my life: the rest of the evening after the man declared we were hereby deflowered and were no longer virgins and were allowed to get back to our seats. More screaming and foot stomping and cat calling. For something that should have been memorable to the extreme, curiously, I cannot remember what happened afterwards and NO alcohol nor medication was involved.

“Tina” and I never saw each other again after this. Heck, I don’t even remember her name. As a matter of fact, I did not remember this episode in my life, my indoctrination into crazy American Pop Cultures, until Jack’s comment. So thanks.

My only regret is that I wish I had a blog back then (since keeping a journal has always been out of the question for me – it’s just not for me). I would have recounted everything as soon as I got back to my sauna closet. Wait. Wait. I would have taken tons of pictures. Just imagine: The awesome blog fodder. The even more awesome tantalizing title for this post:

I Lost My Virginity at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Lost in Translation

21 Replies

The comment by Justin from Here where I Have Landed on my earlier post Things I Missed echoed my experience and feeling:

… when I tell people that I wasn’t born here, and that I came here to go to college, they’re consistently surprised, “What? But your English is so good!” like it’s completely unnatural that I can string my words together cohesively and not say “Engrish”.

I won’t lie. I have always prided myself on my “good English”. It is a skill that I have mastered on my own and therefore I believe I have earned the right to be proud of it. You know, the same way you’d be proud of your ability to speak, say, French just like the natives. Many many years ago, while I was working on my dissertation which focused on Asian Americans (both American-born and immigrants of Asian descent), I noticed and was troubled by the gap created by the (in)ability to command “good English”. Those who cannot communicate well in English are perceived as foreign, bizarre, lacking in humanity. People tend to write them off as “There is little, if not nothing, in common between us”. Stupid even. (Talking louder and slower. You know what I mean…)

<<Digression: Of course, interestingly, the above does not seem to apply to someone who speaks only French, or German. Or Spanish, depending on what the person looks like.>>

Against my advisor’s strong protest, I insisted on ending my dissertation with a rather personal essay because I believe in presenting a story from as many valid perspectives as possible, especially by people who somehow cannot “speak for themselves”, even if doing so might have negated some of the theorization I was trying to accomplish through my thesis. Since it’s been eating me alive how only 5 people have read my dissertation which represented 5 years of my life, I am going to share an abridged version of the last chapter of my dissertation here on this soapbox (aka my blog). After all, recycling is good for the earth.

The field for one’s ethnographic study is full of ‘surprises’ and ‘exceptions.’ Every time I theorized a statement or a performative moment, something else would come up that threw my analysis off balance. My theories and analyses cannot account for all individual occurrences. There is always the ‘unexpected’ that makes me think more, that makes me care more. Such is the story of Zhang, a Chinese musician who works frequently with the local theatres.

Zhang came from Mainland China. He had been studying and working in Beijing for almost forty years before he came to the United States in 1993. Zhang has to work at five jobs just to make ends meet. Other than the occasional gigs for performance and composing, he also works at a Chinese restaurant for six hours every day, and he works as a masseur/accupressurist. When Zhang was hired to perform at dinner parties and in Chinese restaurants, by the Chinese standard, it was a fall from grace. He was the master musician in China, and now in the United States he has to peddle his music in front of dinner guests who pay no attention to his existence, let alone his art.

Zhang has tremendous difficulty adjusting to life here because he knows little English, and he has neither the time nor energy to learn a foreign language. He told me that when he gets a job offer, he asks people to send him information in writing. He then looks up new words in the dictionary and only in this way does he know when and where he is supposed to show up and what, to perform. The day before the performance, he has to drive to the place, like a drill, to make sure he knows the directions. When he works with the local theatres, he needs an interpreter to help him understand what their needs are and what the performance is about. People have neither the time nor the funds to translate the whole script for him. A lot of times he has to go home and look up most of the words in the script one by one. He told me he has never had an actual conversation with people in those theatres he works with because he can’t.

“Then why don’t you go back?” I could imagine people asking him. So I did, and he explained,

“The material life is not as good for me in this country because I was provided with an apartment and a nice salary when I was in China, as ‘First Class Composer.’ In contrast, I have to work several jobs here just to pay my rent. I can’t function normally here because I don’t have an adequate command of English. I can’t even answer the phone myself… But what makes me stay is the liberation I feel here. The freedom to create music in my own way. Nobody can tell me what to do or what not to do.”

Zhang, like many artists, would like to believe in the universality of art. He needs to believe his artistic creation can be shared by all people, and his art can bridge the differences and bring out the commonalities between people. However, this kind of theorization does not help Zhang’s situation. The discrepancy between his belief and his reality in the United States is painfully obvious.

The language barrier looms large.

Learning English somehow has become the primary goal of Zhang’s life in the United States, a goal he does not expect to achieve because he has to work most of the time in order to survive. With his limited English, he can find work that pays only the minimum wage. A vicious cycle was started as soon as he landed here.

Zhang surmises his own predicament, “I am crippled because I don’t understand English. There is no way I can get out of this bind with my limited command of English.”

It is curious how little has been theorized about the English language as an important factor in building “Asian American” communities/identities and, at the same time, marginalizing the non-English speaking population. There are practical and urgent issues of immigrant subjectivity regarding language skills and economic class. Just because they do not speak English does not mean their subjectivities do not exist. Nevertheless, the boundaries set up by language barriers are real and difficult to cross despite all the talks of figurative boundary-crossing. It was luck that I happen to be a native Chinese speaker, that I could talk to Zhang and, as much as I dislike this term, ‘speak for’ him.

Towards the end of our interview, I asked Zhang the question I ask every one of my interviewees: “Where is home? Is it here in the United States or is it China?” Zhang was greatly affected by this question. The tears welled up in his eyes. I was stunned. I was not prepared to deal with this situation. A great sense of guilt overwhelmed me. Here I was, in a noisy and crowded Chinese restaurant, facing a 60-year-old Chinese man in tears. I made him cry. I felt as though I had made my father cry in public.

“I am sorry.” I did not know what else to say. “I am sorry.” My voice sounded helpless. Impotent. There is nothing I could do. And there I was, with a perfect “ethnographic” subject — one with a heart-wrenching story. One who is obviously a victim of national boundaries and political upheaval and cultural alienation and economic inequality. One who cannot speak for himself in the United States. I did not know what to do but say over and over again, “I am sorry.”

Wiping his eyes, Zhang said, “It’s not your fault. It’s just that nobody has ever asked me this question all these years when I am here. Home? Exactly. Where is home for me? I think I was brought here by Fate. Fate made me come here and stay… I don’t have friends here. I don’t have anybody that I can talk ‘heart to heart.’ In China, I have buddies. Here, nobody.”

When scholars analyze and document hardships that immigrants have to go through, they forget to mention loneliness. Right after I turned off my tape recorder, Zhang sighed and said, “You know, I have been here for so long and nobody has ever bothered to ask me that question. THAT is America.” He fell into a silence.

Things I Missed

30 Replies

I have been back to my real life since two Sundays ago. After a week on the beach, doing nothing, having no appointments to make, no place to rush to, I find it hard to adjust back to life in the suburbia 100%. On the first few days after The Beach, I caught myself thinking that I was about to get ready to go to the beach. I got a bit disoriented when I was driving because I was expecting to make the right turn and go into the development where the beach house was. In an almost imperceptible way, memories from the beach (even when I did not know I was remembering specifically any scene, any event, so perhaps it is more aptly an “aura”) seeped into reality as I am trying to adjust to life back to normal.

Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.

Disorientation. It happens every year after The Beach. Naturally it does get better as the week of post-coastal ~~coital~~ tristesse advances.

Perhaps because I now have a ~~Tamagotchi~~ blog to keep, I am even more self-reflective; I was caught by surprise by how I reacted with happiness to some of the things back home. Things I hadn’t realized I’d missed while I was doing The Beach… in addition to the Internet and robust Wireless coverage, it goes without saying.

My bed. Ok. Our bed. And I did consciously miss it during The Beach. At least my aching back did. A lot.

When we moved into our current house ten years ago, my husband and I made a conscious decision to get ourselves the best bed we could afford without going against our principle, “Only losers pay retail”. Considering how on average human beings spend one third of their lives in bed (i.e. 8+ out of 24 hours every day in theory), a firm and comfortable bed that allows you to wake up refreshed is one of the best investment with the highest ROI a person can make. Our bed is one of those memory foams similar to Tempur-Pedic, and true to the marketing claim, we seldom disturb each other when we lie down or get up from the bed. The downside of having such an awesome bed is 1) We feel like going straight to bed most of the time, and 2) We are so spoiled now that we find it hard to fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up without kinks or aches when we travel.

My car.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard a joke about driving while female? How about driving while Asian? Now put those two together, you got? Me.

I have to write about my love for driving one day, but for now, it suffices to say that I missed my car even though we had a nice and clean rental car, a Toyota Camry, that week. I didn’t realize that I missed my tiny hatchback. In fact, after a long absence, I tend to be hesitant when I put my foot on the gas pedal, feeling like a virgin driver. I supplied pressure with my foot tentatively and my car purred (the way a small, non-sporty car does anyway). I thought, “Oh how I have missed you!” I love the familiarity. The comfort and ease. The confidence I exude when I am behind the steering wheel of my itty bitty car. Possibly the smallest, everyday car, used to transport kids on a regular basis within the 15-mile radius of Suburbia. The pride, most likely undeserved, I feel in my heart when I am surrounded by gas-guzzling SUVs. Especially when I encounter a Cadillac Escalade on the road (which for some reason happens more often than I wish), I see my itty bitty superduper hatchback as a finger extended in its general direction.

Booyah!

Chicago. Or any other larger city with a diverse population where I will not be stared at like a zoo animal. Where I do not stand out. Where I blend into the mosaic tapestry of life effortlessly. Where I will be ignored, just like everybody else.

For one reason or another we end up in the northern most tip of OBX every year where even the groundskeepers are white. No shit. Even the seasonal workers they employ in the stores and restaurants are of Eastern European origins. This year, for the first time, I saw two Asian cashiers at the supermarket, and (I did not imagine this!) they looked startled when they saw me at the checkout line.

Yeah, I am going to sound like a reverse-racist but it gets on my nerves every single year on the beach, this lack of diversity. This pervasive whiteness. I am never the only person of color there because my sister-in-law is of Asian Indian heritage. (Born and bred in the U.S. of A.). Although she laughs every time I mention how 1) this has got to be the worst week for their property value, 2) the two of us double the population of Asian descent instantly, 3) “I am going to integrate now!” before I head towards the local super market, she may not be as sensitive as I am. I, the product of years of Ivory-Tower immersion in race theories, American histories, cultural histories, identity theories, racial politics, post-colonial literature and theories, what have you. Every year I counted the number of people of color I saw on the beach, in the pool, in the general area. This year I saw on the beach one African American family and a family of white parents and their children adopted from Asia. Then there were me and my sister-in-law. That’s it. Never more than a dozen.

The staring. The surreptitious looks. Sometimes became too much. Without knowing it, I became edgy, stressed, and bitter because I was on display.

I whisper-yelled at the kids to behave more than I should have done, I didn’t know then but I do now, because I wanted to make sure that THESE PEOPLE not walk away with ANY false impression of Asian people. God forbid if I were the only Asian person they have come in close contact with in a shared environment, i.e. outside of Chinese restaurants, dry cleaners, nail salons, [fill in stereotypically Asian-owned businesses]. I certainly don’t want them to draw any negative conclusions about Asian-looking people because of the mistakes I made. (Great! Now they are going to think that Asian mothers yell at their kids too much! Fuck!)

I was ON the whole time. I was on my best behavior. I made great efforts to speak with as little hint of my foreign accent as possible because FUCK if I wanted to perpetuate the stereotype of Asians as perpetual, inscrutable, foreigners in this country. (The irony of me being indeed a FOREIGNER was not lost on me. Thank you very much. And I hope you all American-born people of Asian descent appreciate my fighting this battle alongside you so please no more making fun of people speaking in a foreign accent so you can feel, you know, American…)

As soon as I stepped off the plane at O’Hare Airport and emerged from the jetway, I was greeted with faces of varying shades in the bustling gate area. I let out a sigh of relief. The tension in my shoulders, which I hadn’t known was there, dissipated with such force it was physically perceptible to me. The chip on my shoulder melted, figuratively and physically even though I hadn’t realized I’d been wearing one. I was able to relax. I did not become fully aware of it until I no longer felt subconsciously the need to represent.

Yup. I missed not having to represent.

My Love Affair

15 Replies

On July 4th, at around 5 pm, I loaded the boys into the car, against all best judgement, headed towards the community park where half the town had been and the rest of the town was heading towards. We were determined to be there for the long haul. The final prize? The July 4th fireworks.

And it was definitely worth the wait.

Waiting. We are in for the long haul

If you know me, you know I am not blindly in love with this country. Oh hell no. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin come with the US of A. ’nuff said. But on some days, at the risk of being pegged as a traitor to my Motherland (and this bittersweet part may be hard to understand unless you are an immigrant yourself), lampooned for wanting to be somebody I am not, i.e. “The American” (and this dilemma may be difficult to appreciate unless you are a foreigner struggling with watching yourself becoming American, sometimes against your own protest and possibly against your own best judgement), maligned for turning my back against my own people (a la Miss Saigon who harbors the dream of “Coming to America”), or ridiculed for having drunk the Kool-Aid and embraced the American Dream (and not the kind in which I become filthy rich but the kind in which I bellow out “We Are the World” like the baddest idealistic that I am), I love this country with all my heart.

This is something hard for me to admit and even harder to explain to folks back home. I am after all here in the US by myself. Admitting I am “Proud to be American” sometimes feels like a betrayal. I feel guilty. Embarrassed even. Am I becoming “uppity”, thinking I am better than they, whoever they are? On the other hand, I am prepared to slap a bitch if anybody attacks me thus since such criticism belies the assumption that being American is somehow better, more desirable, than being whatever. So you are the one with issues, not me. Take that, Booyah!

“American” is after all a social construct. Many current political, social and economical debates (and really, they all come down to who gets what) are even possible exactly because what and who is American is always up for definition and re-definition. And THAT, IMHO, is what makes this country different. Great. Lovable. Even though on some days you really do not want to have anything to do with it.

I love the IDEA of this country. I love the IDEAL of it that many so-called “real” Americans fortunately still believe in and insist on.

"Give me your huddled masses"

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome"

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
‘ With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

"I lift my lamp beside the golden door"

The ideal is worth the wait.

p.s. I am also in love with my Blackberry with which these photos were taken, except the last one which came from my husband’s newer and better Blackberry. Bastard.

Happy Birthday, United States of America!

24 Replies

What better way to celebrate Independence Day by watching this clip from Independence Day again?

WE WILL NOT GO QUITELY INTO THE NIGHT!
WE WILL NOT VANISH WITHOUT A FIGHT!

We are going to live on. We are going to survive.

Today, we celebrate our Independence Day!

What better way than to read The Declaration of Independence again? Really carefully this time.

What better way to celebrate July 4th by reading this again?

Or to imagine what Ben Franklin’s Facebook page would have been like?

Befriending a Founding Father

Or to participate in your hometown Fourth of July parade?

Becoming American

6 Replies

The Monster Birthday Month Bash continues…

July 3rd.

Happy Birthday to Franz Kafka, Dave Barry, and one Thomas Cruise Mapother IV aka Tom Cruise.

Kafka is dead. Cruise will live forever.

Dave Barry used to be funny. Tom Cruise is still scary.

My oldest’s gymnastics practice is right by where the Hometown Fest carnival is taking place. Last night when I drove to the gym, I was able to drive past the police barricade with the obvious excuse of picking my child up and park right next to the carnival. As in, HERE is the parking spot. 30 steps later. Oh lookee here, we are at the carnival!

I am always appreciative of an awesome, once-in-a-lifetime parking spot, mindful of the hapless souls circling the residential area looking for a spot within a humane radius we encountered along the way. Naturally we went back to the carnival again tonight. We had to. You simply CANNOT waste a good parking spot like that. It’s bad karma.

The carnival on Friday night was a completely different beast than the one we saw on Thursday night. The one on Thursday night was docile, leisurely. Carefree. And sober. The carnival I went to last night was frantic, full of teenage angst, yet at the same time going through midlife crisis. Everyone older than 21 apparently had one drink or more.

Who says suburban life is all repression? We let our inner demons out once every year, under the watchful eyes of carnival workers.

FREE BIRD!

I am pretty sure whoever taught me about the historical significance of shouting FREE BIRD at a concert regretted it. This random act of kindness has created a monster who yells out FREE BIRD! whenever she has the guts and chance. Probably done inappropriately 50% of the time. But I LOVE bellowing out, FREE BIRD! because it makes me feel… I don’t know, intrinsically American. Like a secret handshake that someone was kind enough to show me. Perhaps I imagined this, but I swear that as soon as people heard me shouting FREE BIRD! — even at the most inopportune times — they no longer see me as foreign, despite the accent. I became, instead of standing out like a sore thumb, instantly one of the in-crowd. It’s like a code. I have cracked the code. One of them anyway.

It’s no wonder why I am fascinated by American pop culture and see it as a personal imperative to understand all pop culture references known to man. These are little bits of mosaic puzzles for becoming American.

The same can be said of

“We need more cowbell!”

“These pretzels are making me thirsty!”

“420”

These however are more esoteric pop culture references that need to be used and appreciated by specific audiences.

Every time I walk into a room, I integrate.

Every time I walk into a room, I represent.

At least that’s how I feel. On some days, it makes me feel empowered and shit. On the others, it just makes me feel like shit.

Last night at the carnival was one of the better days.

The July 4th carnival is where I get to see the real Americans.

Not the over-educated, pampered, (forced to be) politically correct, self-conscious people I have chosen and am able to surround myself with, including affording a house in a certain type of neighborhood. There is no need for me to prove my American-ness to these people. They should know better. They have all agreed to live with multiculturalism, no matter how begrudgingly. That’s part of the baggage of being the bourgeois. They have signed the contract.

The kind of real Americans I imagined I would have met if I ever drove down Route 66.

Naturally, when I make such a statement, I am seeing the “natives” as exotic creatures from the perspective of a tourist.

At the Hometown Fest, I felt schizophrenic: on one hand, more than ever, being outside of my usual comfort zone (home, work, home, work), I sensed that my foreignness was on display. After all, it is Hometown Fest, not Tourist Town. Insiders only.

On the other hand, as I chugged down my third beer, sweet-talked the carnival guy into giving the kids a bigger prize (yes, I used “the wink”), watched the kids having an all-out battle with inflatable hammers and inflatable baseball bats against a football player who looked like a stereotypical football player whose girlfriend affectionately called the “meat head”, joked with the said girlfriend who looked like a stereotypical (former) cheerleader and Queen Bee, chitchatted with random bystanders, and in general, hung out, I felt “vindicated”. Strangely at home. I have hit the motherload: the real Americans, the ones who did not have to be nice or be politically correct or be tolerant and shit, thought I was just one of the regular Joes. I have managed to sneak past through the door and now I am looking from the inside out. I am one of the townies.

On second thought, maybe not completely 100% townie. Not yet. At least, not until I attend one of these…