Tag Archives: are you fucking kidding me?

WTF Wednesday: So you think you are being a good Samaritan…

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Hello, there. I thought I’d resurface with an installment of WTF Wednesday. I hope this serves as a nice counter balance to the holly jolly Christmas cheer, as manifested by the non-stop Christmas music ringing in your ears, that’s making you, even though you don’t want to admit it, a little bit dizzy. Or maybe even stabby.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by people who love you and whom you love. I hope that you have finished all the left-over in the fridge or at least the pies that you left outside in a Tupperware container because there was no space in your fridge. I hope you now finally have space in your fridge for the more important things in life. I mean, beer, white wine, Franzie, etc. of course. I hope that you have by now managed to feel less bloated so you can fully enjoy the said beverages without other stuff such as meat and stuffings in the way.

I received an email from our local food pantry today: “There has been a tremendous response to the call for food donation. As a result, the food pantry is inundated with donations and is in great need for help to sort all the food in order to stock the pantry.”

You ask: How hard is it to just stick the cans and boxes onto the shelves? And why is it such an emergency?

Basically, the shelves are empty because all of the food is on the floor of the sorting room waiting to be processed.

The food needs to be processed before they can be put on the shelves because people are crazy.

Yup. You heard me.

Some people must think that poor people will eat just about anything. You know, as the saying goes: Beggars can’t be choosers? So they bring in everything from their pantry that they do not want and yet cannot bring themselves to throw away.

Rusty jars. Torn packages. Dog food mixed with a box of people food.

The volunteers have to open up every single jar of peanut butter because somehow people love to donate half-eaten jars. My son found two today. And it’s his first time there. Bingo!

And you know what? Stop buying green beans. It seems that what most people do is buy green beans, leave them on the shelf at home, and then donate them whenever there is a food drive. Come on. If you don’t like green beans, don’t buy them, because chances are the poor people and their poor children do not like them either.

Most of the time is spent on inspecting the expiration dates. Here is my plea to the FDA or whatever government agency in charge of this: Please dictate a date format and a set of standard locations for putting the expiration dates on food packages. Really. Go into your own pantry and time how long it takes you to find the expiration date for everything in there and to decipher the alphanumeric string.

The oldest expiration date I saw today? 2006.

2.0.0.6.

That’s like, oh I don’t know, half a decade ago. A baby has grown up enough to enter Kindergarten during all those years when that can was sitting inside your house post-expiration.

(Blogger’s Note: I went back again today and won the top prize:  A can with the expiration date of 2002. Apparently though even that is not the oldest the regular volunteers have seen there.)

Being Chinese, I understand the inability to throw away food. I really do. Heck, the folk tale tradition tells us that one of the main responsibilities of the God of Thunder is to strike people who waste food. You throw away food, you get smitten to death.

However, let’s think about this: These people are already unable to afford basic meals. Hello? That’s why they come to the food pantry in the first place. What do you think will happen when they eat your shitty food and become ill? It’s much worse than if you have not tried to help.

So here is the shocker: the expired food does get identified and thrown away. Oh yes. Don’t think you can sneak one in: Oh, maybe they won’t notice… so you don’t feel bad about wasting food. Any time the volunteer spends on reading that expiration date is time not spent on stocking food on the pantry shelves for families in need of help.

 

I can totally see Fox News headline: SHOCKING REVELATION ABOUT POOR PEOPLE IN AMERICA!

Megyn Kelly: Poor people not really poor. They refuse to accept expired canned goods!

Bill O’Reilly: I remember in the good ol’ days when there were only good ol’ hard-working American people in this country, we ate expired food all the time and we grew up fine. It’s all those Liberal’s fault: putting such a Socialist idea into the poor’s heads that they should say NO to a perfectly good ol’ can of green beans with an expiration date of 2010.

Seriously people: No Christmas decorations or music yet. Bring Back Thanksgiving!!!

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I first published this post in 2009 and reposted it in November 2010. Every year, as early as towards the end of October, I found myself aghast coming face to face with Christmas merchandise and sometimes even MUSIC when the leaves are still sporting brilliant red and yellow.

Seriously? What the F people?

What about Thanksgiving? You know, the quintessential American holiday? The way I see it, FAUX NEWS should be carrying this “Bring Thanksgiving Back” flag if they talk about being the TRUE Americans all the fucking damn time.

The following is my now annual (so it seems *sigh*) tirade against the demise of the significance of Thanksgiving in the face of overwhelming commercialism…

Yeah tirade! Aren’t you glad that I am back in more ways than one?!

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I started campaigning for a forced postponement, a temporary deferral, of celebrating Christmas until AFTER Thanksgiving Day four five six years ago.  I even registered for the domain name: BringBackThanksgiving.com (which is still available… I am sad to confirm… Any takers?)  I stopped paying for it after two years when I realized that with a full time job and three boys to take care of, I simply did not have the capacity to deal with Microsoft FrontPage. (Yikes. Do you remember the days, the days before Blogger, WordPress, etc. when one had to use a software such as FrontPage in order to have one’s own website? *shudder*)

“Curb your enthusiasm!” I beseech you.  “As you recover from the sugar high from all the Halloween candies.  As you dispose of the spider webs, the goblins, the mummy tombs, the rotten carved pumpkins.”

Please, oh, please don’t switch directly from Orange and Black to Red and Green.  However tempting it is when you move all the Halloween boxes down to your basement and see all the Christmas boxes beckoning at you. The smiling Santa with the chubby cheeks.  The snowman. The reindeer.  Resist the temptation: Didn’t Jesus die on the cross partly to teach us this lesson?  Be strong for the sake of your children.

The children need you to show them that, Yes, you believe in the meaning and significance of Thanksgiving Day. Yes, it is important that we take one day out to deliberately remember and show gratitude to all the people who add meanings to our lives, to all the material goods that we are blessed enough to own. To strangers who give you a smile in the street and thus brighten your day. To strangers who by merely doing their jobs are making the world a better, safer place.

My heart aches upon seeing houses adorned with Christmas lights right after, sometimes even before, Halloween.  Of course I am not intimating that the homeowners are therefore not thankful.  No siree.  I am simply dismayed that the significance of Thanksgiving, the arguably ONE holiday that we should all be able to agree on and celebrate, is undermined sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas.

(I admit: I may be putting my foot in my mouth by saying this. I have no clear idea how the native Americans take this holiday though I suspect there must be a lot of conflicting feelings. Do they sometimes wish that Squanto were not so kind as to assist the pilgrims? FWIW, by reading “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” and “Teaching About Thanksgiving“, I am convinced that Thanksgiving is indeed deeper and bigger than just the Pilgrims and the Indians… I hope I do not offend should anyone of Native American descent stops by this post…)

I blame the turkey.

You heard me right. It is the turkey’s fault. In terms of merchandising, turkeys are just not as attractive as say, bunnies, chicks, Santa Clause, snowman, reindeer, and so on.  I have not seen any child hugging a plush Turkey toy lovingly.

turkey

To be honest, that red thing hanging down the throat freaks me out.  Pardon me for being crass, but it always reminds me of testicles. I don’t know why. But it does.

Many, especially Hallmark (bless their heart!), have tried to turn the turkey into an adorable icon:  but seriously, how adorable can you make a turkey?

Turkey for eating

Even more sickening is that in these cutesy depictions of turkeys, they are all forced to celebrate the event in which they will be slaughtered, cooked and eaten! The abomination!

No cute icons, no easy way for merchandising. No easy way for merchandising, no rampant commidification of Thanksgiving. No rampant commidification of Thanksgiving, no shelf space at your local drugstores and grocery stores.

(I am grateful for no longer being in the academia which affords me the opportunity to posit theories full of holes and preaches them on the Internet with no qualms… I am like Glenn Beck on an anti-Turkey path…)

But with your help, we can stem the tide.  We can start it from inside of our homes.

Perhaps we can all start a tradition of having each one of the family members mention one thing that they are grateful for, every day, in the month of November.  No matter how small or how trivial.

Perhaps we can start a quiet movement to resist the Red and Green color scheme from popping up inside of our own houses. Until the day after Thanksgiving.

On the morning of November 26 this year (because November 25, Black Friday, is reserved for Competitive Shopping, or most likely, nursing a stomach ache and hangover headache), I am moving up the Christmas Tree from our basement first thing in the morning.  I am really looking forward to it. And to optimize my effort of transforming my house into a winter wonderland for Christmas, I shall keep the decorations up until after Valentine’s day. Thank goodness for the lllloooonnnngggg winter here. That is, of course, until one of you starts a campaign for bringing back Valentine’s Day…


“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

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I was as naive as could be. And possibly stupid. I now realized.

When I first read the op-ed by Warren Buffett in New York Times, “Stop Coddling the Super Rich”, on 14 August, in which Buffett expounded on the concept of “shared sacrifices” and argued for tax increase for the super wealthy, himself included, I thought, BRAVO! Now this should be a plan that at least 98% of the population can get behind of.

I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.

But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.

 

He ended his well-reasoned proposal with this plea:

My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.

 

Why was I surprised that Fox News immediately rose up in arms and accused Buffett of inciting CLASS WARFARE (ironically when they are themselves the ones that continue to use such figures of speech)? The rhetorics employed by these pundits left me gagging and in shock.

 

(For those who cannot watch the video, here is the partial list of Fox News clips included in this Daily Show segment. You can find the entire transcript on Daily Kos)

NEIL CAVUTO (8/15/2011): Warren Buffett, writing how the rich should pay more taxes, but saying not a word about the half of American households that pay no income taxes at all.

STUART VARNEY (8/18/2011): Is that fair, when half the population pays absolutely nothing?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN, R-TX (7/7/2011): 51%, that’s a majority of American households, paid no income tax in 2009. Zero. Zip. Nada.

NEAL BOORTZ (6/1/2011): Many of them get so much money in tax credits … that it wipes out any Social Security taxes or Medicare taxes they’re paying. They are absolutely on a free ride.

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER (7/11/2011): … broaden the tax base …

MICHELE BACHMANN (7/11/2011): Everyone needs to pay something.

NEIL CAVUTO (8/6/2011): Before you start demanding one group pay more, maybe get everyone to put skin in the game.

ROBERT RECTOR, HERITAGE FOUNDATION (7/19/2011): When you look at the actual living conditions of the 43 million people that the Census says are poor, you see that in fact they have all these modern conveniences.

STUART VARNEY (7/19/2011): Poor families in the United States are not what they used to be. 99% of them have a refrigerator. 81% have a microwave; 78% have air conditioning; 63% have cable TV; 54% have cell phones; 48% have a coffee maker; 25% have a dishwasher.

 

[The technical definition of being poor is a family of four with an income of $22,350 a year.]

 

NEAL BOORTZ (7/6/2011): It is all-out war on the productive class in our society for the benefit of the moocher class.

JOHN STOSSEL (10/12/2010): The makers, and the takers.

BILL O’REILLY (10/12/2010): They want to take it from somebody else.

LAURA INGRAHAM (6/29/2011): Everyone’s jumping in the wagon, no one wants to pull.

NEAL BOORTZ (6/22/2011): … parasites we have out there depending on government …

NEBRASKA ATTY. GEN. JON BRUNING (8/18/2011): The raccoons, they’re not stupid, they’re going to do the easy way if we make it easy for them, just like welfare recipients all across America.

ANN COULTER (8/15/2011): Welfare will create generations of utterly irresponsible animals.

 

[The bottom 50% of the people, the moochers, the takers? They control 2.5% of the wealth. ]

 

What happened to Compassionate Conservatism? Remember that? They don’t even bother to pretend to care any more?

As I laughed at Jon Stewart’s sardonic commentaries, at the same time, I felt my eyes burning. Out of frustration. Out of shame. Yes, I feel ashamed for these people. The Haves. The “class” that I belong to. All I could do to calm myself the fuck down was to recite these lines that Joseph Welch said to Joseph McCarthy during one of the infamous hearings:

 Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

 

The Real American Idols

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Source: I saw this cartoon via Paul Rieckhoff today.

 

My 13-year-old is working on a debate project for school. His topic? Support for Death Penalty. (He has turned in a written article against death penalty last week. The teacher wants them to be able to argue from both sides for the topic they are each assigned to)

He was telling me all about the horrible cases he has read on the Internet, including some high profile cases of brutal assault and murder on young children. I cringed. My first instinct was to tell him to stop. Aren’t there some things in the world simply to horrifying to learn about? Isn’t it sometimes better if one simply does not know such evil existed and still exists?

I don’t remember how we went from death penalty, to Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (from women’s right to vote, to the right to bear arms, to the freedom of speech), but all of a sudden I found myself telling them about Westboro “Church” (Church is in quotation mark for obvious reasons…)  Naturally the boys were astounded to find such ridiculousness is being practiced by a bunch of grownups.  I went on to tell them about the Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that even Westboro “Church” is protected under the First Amendment.

“Can you just imagine these stupid people protesting at the funerals of soldiers who died just so these stupid people could have their stupid freedom of speech?” (Just substitute Stupid with Fucking)

“Can you imagine their parents who just lost their children having to see these stupid people at the funeral??!!”

I started tearing up.

 

I am trying to explain via my rambling above why I woke up this morning and decided to google “Memorial Day + Westboro” without even knowing that Westboro “Church” had planned to picket the memorial service in Joplin, MO because President Obama was going to be there. (According to tweets and the latest news I could find: POTUS was there; Westboro was not. Several unconfirmed reports said that Westboro crazies were in town but their presence at the memorial service was thwarted due to citizen actions…)

Then I saw the tweets from Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) who is there right now at the Arlington National Cemetery:

 

I will just stop here because, wow, I don’t know what to say…

 

 

 

Footnote: Although I self-process to be a bleeding heart liberal, I often wonder what the official definition of that label is. Does it include an unexamined stance against war? Coming from a different country, different culture, different hemisphere, I am not completely anti-war. *gasp* War becomes inevitable when your country is being invaded and your people is being physically attacked on your physical territory. China went through the pillaging and ravaging by the Western world in the beginning of the 20th century; the whole people suffered humiliation under the greedy and power-hungry paws of the colonial forces.  (How do you think Hong Kong ended up being “leased” to the British Empire for 99 years?)  China fought against Japan in the brutal Sino-Japanese war two years before the so-called World War II started in Europe when Poland was invaded. And Taiwan? Taiwan was a Japanese colony for 50 years. When the KMT first retreated to Taiwan, in order to consolidate and ensure their power, the KMT government massacred the majority of the intellectual leaders.  And now? Taiwan is constantly living with the threat that China may decide to invade one day. (Or from their perspective, simply “take back what is rightfully part of China”…) All the male children are required to serve in the army for 12 months (it used to be 2 years).

What I am trying to explain by way of the above rambling is that I have an instinctual respect and admiration for people who serve(d) their countries because I have learned the horror from Chinese histories of when a country was not able to defend itself and the brutality of war itself.

Instinctual the same way I feel about teachers. (Confucius is really quite influential despite my grumblings against all the stereotypes and stupid Confucius quotes on Twitter)

“I have a spare tire in my car.”

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I don’t know what else to say. I will just quote extensively from this news report from KSN News 3 on May 25, 2011.

Sometime in May Representatives in Topeka, Kansas “were debating a bill that would ban insurance companies from offering abortion coverage in regular health plans. The bill, that was signed into law Wednesday, means women will have to buy a separate health policy to cover abortions.”

During the debate, Barbara Bollier, a Kansas lawmaker “pointed out that abortions would not be covered, under the new Kansas law, for cases of rape and incest.”

Kansas Pete DeGraaf responded by saying, “We need to plan ahead, don’t we, in life?”

Bollier then asked, “And so, women need to plan ahead for issues that they have no control over with pregnancy?”

Are you ready for DeGraaf’s response to this question?

“I have a spare tire in my car,” said DeGraaf. “I also have life insurance. I have a lot of things that I plan ahead for.”

 

“I have a spare tire in my car.”

 

WTF Wednesday? Duh. Winning!

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This is a cheap shot and oh so predictable. But I need to pay homage to the latest Interweb sensation and not only an awesome Internet meme in the making but a generous provider of meme material.

Yes, my friend. I am talking about Charlie Sheen. My apology indeed. I know most of you are tired of hearing/reading about Sheen’s latest antics by now, but allow me to have some fun.

For two days now my co-worker and I have been saying,

Duh. WINNING!

to each other when something, um, AWESOME, happened at work, i.e. we have been saying this to each other or playing the sound wav. file a lot.

 

 

Many of you would argue that this man is far gone, that he needs immediate medical assistance. But I read the highlights of his rants and I cannot help but be impressed by his creativity and command of metaphors:

What they’re not ready for is guys like you and I and Nails and all the other gnarly gnarlingtons in my life, that we are high priests, Vatican assassin warlocks. Boom. Print that, people. See where that goes.

I’m freakin’ bayonets. I’m battle-tested bayonets, bro.

I’m an F-18, bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordnance to the ground.

I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon. Clearly I have defeated this earthworm with my words — imagine what I would have done with my fire breathing fists.

These insults are the rocket fuel that lives in the tip of my sabre.

… People that don’t have tiger blood, you know, Adonis DNA.

I’m extremely old-fashioned, I’m a nobleman, I’m chivalrous. I believe that chivalry is not dead, it’s just been in a coma for a while.

I’m sorry, man, I got magic, and I’ve got poetry in my fingertips.

 

And yes, you have all heard this golden nugget:

I am on a drug. It’s called Charlie Sheen. It’s not available because if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.

 

And seriously, these gems, if they had not been spoken by Sheen, would have been on a t-shirt or coffee mug somewhere:

Can’t is the cancer of happen.

Dying is for amateurs.

 

There is something to be said about this unabashed optimistic confident outlook on one’s own life and oneself.

I am not bi-polar. I am bi-winning.

I cured it with my brain, with my mind.

The only thing I’m addicted to is winning.

 

To be 100% honest, once in a while, I’d like to be able to say something like this without any trace of irony in my heart:

I’m tired of pretending like I’m not special. I’m tired of pretending like I’m not bitchin’, a total frickin’ rock star from Mars.

 

Ok, so at the end of the day, I guess the above serves as further proof he’s manic–depressive. However it turns out, I am going to be WINNING-ing in the office in the near future. Beats the Sad Trombone that we have been routinely using.

Duh. WINNING!

 

p.s. You can generate your own Winning rant with the Stark Raving Mad Libs (which I found through The Bloggess). Here is mine.

p.s.s. I found many applications for this new Internet Meme of WINNING: for instance, I used it this morning when I found the parking spot right next to the train station entrance empty even though I got there late. It could also be used sardonically to explain what some people were thinking when they said something that made everybody else go “What what?!”

 

This could be used to explain what these people were thinking when they said something that made everybody else go "What what?!"

 

Double L for Loser

 

p.p.p.s. You know who gets to say WINNING for realz? Robert Downey Jr. That’s who.

The REAL Comeback kid from drug rehabs and embarrassing arrests

 

“What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

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As an agnostic, I do acknowledge a higher unknown force. But I also know that the earth revolves around the sun and that the tides are created by the moon's gravitational pull. Incidentally, my second-grader knows that too.

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Just so we are clear on this: Mars has TWO moons, discovered in 1877...

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But, Wait, There is more!

Inspired by Vapid Blonde’s brilliant idea in her comment, that Papa Bear’s words when read out loud could sound almost like a children’s book, I present you with these…

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WTF Wednesday: These boots are made for walking

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These boots are nice, right? But I am not showing them because they are sexy. These boots were spotted 2 hours into a mountain climbing route...

This is what most of the paths on those mountains look like...

And this is what the mountain peak looks like...

A Long Way Home

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Here is something that amused me for an entire hour the other day:

Go to google map, search for Directions from China to Taiwan.

Take a look at Direction Number 55.

Here, I have taken the liberty to show you a composite screenshot. I am awesome like this.

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Before you sneer at how easily I am amused (even though it is true!) please know that you cannot do this for trips between say the U.S. and Europe. google will not allow you to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. Whereas trips to Asia? Google says, “Be my guest!”

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This is why, ladies and gents, we do not complain about air travel...

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This is why, ladies and gentlemen, we should never complain about air travel.

Looking at this 38-day, 10,000 mile trip in which I have to kayak, jet ski and swim across the Pacific Ocean, I now feel much better about my 2-leg 16-hour-in-middle-seat one-day trip to Taipei.

Perspectives. The cure for whining.

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On an unrelated note, I think I may partake in NaBloPoMo again. National Blog Posting Month. I did it last year: I was crying uncle and said NEVER AGAIN! when I emerged from the darkness called “Blogger’s Block aka I ran out of shit to write about on the third day”. Call me compulsive masochistic nuts. At this moment, I thought I’d give it a go simply because they have a category “Psychotic Ranting/Anonymous Foaming”; I simply need to be part of something this awesome.

Yes. NaBloPoMo looks and sounds very similar to NaBloMoFo, and believe me, by the end of this month, I’d be calling it NaBloMoFo. When your spouse complains about your even crazier blogging obsession, erratic schedules and the unfed children, just tell him that next month could be NaBloJoMo if he pipes down, and oh, does the laundry (by laundry, we mean “folding the goddamn clothes too”. Thank you).

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Something that really made my blood boil today and I think we all need to read this excellent investigative reporting by NPR. Please take a look at this and be outraged. As a nation, we need to be outraged by this: Prison Economics Help Drive Ariz. Immigration Law

… What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants … That’s because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona’s immigration law.

NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.

The law could send hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants to prison in a way never done before. And it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits to private prison companies responsible for housing them.

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What Laura Sullivan and NPR uncovered gives an evil spin to the catchphrase “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Here is my silent scream, something I wish someone in a position to do so could actually confront Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce with, invoking the famous retort by Welch against McCarthy:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Reality bites. No. Reality kicked my ass.

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There is no other way around it: I am a hypocrite.

Isn’t it an ironic coincidence that after my holier-than-thou tirade against bullying and my immagonnakickyourpunkass battle cry, my 12-year-old son told me tonight that he has been called all sorts of names at school?

Names such as gay, nerd, retard. Hurled at him, in passing, on a daily basis.

And the worst perpetrator is the 13 year old son from a family we know (whose youngest child does the same extracurricular activity as my son and therefore we see and hang out with them very often).

As soon as I heard this, all the blood rushed to my head: I could see the Samurai sword in my bedroom and I could see, in my mind’s eye, me wearing a bandanna that says VENGEANCE, going over there right now to kick that little shithead’s ass. The visualization was so vivid my fingers curled around the imaginary sword in my hand and I felt my legs twitch as I kicked the door down.

Of course I did no such thing.

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Not able to coax more details out of my son, I did the only thing I could do: I went to his Facebook account and changed the setting so the little fuckhead and his mother could not see my son’s wall posts any more since, as you probably guessed, unfriend the little fucking curd is probably going to addle him more.

Finally after I put the little one to bed, I had some quiet time with my 7th grader before he went to bed.  I pretended to be calm (not very successfully since I mentioned samurai sword and kick ass and something about moving to Taiwan) and asked him more about what really goes on at school.

Son: Mom. You are over-reacting again! I am not going to tell you anything any more!

Me: Ok ok. I promise I won’t do anything crazy. I just need to get it out inside the house now so I can remain calm about this. I just want to know that you are ok.

Son: You are so lucky that I talk to you! Most kids don’t tell their parents these things…

Me: OK. I promise I will not do anything without asking you first. I will not even tell Miss _________ about [FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT]. I just want to know more and make sure that you are doing ok…

Son: I probably exaggerated a bit. I am not bullied, I guess. People just call me names… like gay, retard, nerd. [Fucking piece of shit] calls me gay all the time.

Me: (Taking a deep breath) Does it bother you?

Son: Nah… Well, it kind of bothers me because I don’t like it when people use those words. When my friends say ‘gay’ or ‘retard’ I tell them to not swear and they say, “What? I am not swearing! I just say retard!” Ugh.

Me: (Taking a really deep breath) Do they single you out? Or do they do it to the other kids?

Son: It’s what the cool kids do. In order to look cool, you have to casually swear all the time, call people gay and retard all the time, and talk about sex non-stop.

Me: (Thinking to myself WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK?! Taking a really really deep breath, and slowly) Ok. So… these kids. They call you names if you cross path. But if you stay away from them, do they seek you out to pick on you? (Wistfully) They don’t bother you right? Right?

Son: Not really… I just feel that they do it to me more. They call me nerd all the time.

Me: Does this make you not want to go to school? Are there other “non-cool” kids that you can hang out with?

Son: (Exasperated) Mom! I have a lot of friends at school! And they think I am cool. But even they call me a nerd. Well, because I am a nerd.

Me: (Exasperated. Hey, I am not Perfect & Wise Mom!) Why do you have to label yourself like this? [Yes, then I launched into a tirade against anti-intellectualism in this country and the stupidity of all this. ALL THIS! Probably did not help. I did say I am not Perfect & Wise Mom…]”

Son: It is kind of annoying that people think I am a nerd. I know Kung Fu very well and I can do a back flip, and I am probably stronger than a lot of them.

Me: Honey, I am not saying this because I am your mother, but I really really think that people are just jealous. I want to let you know that if somebody touches you, you have my permission to, wait, I’d better check with dad before I give you the permission…

Son: We are told this rule at school: If you are punched, cover your face. You are allowed to shove the person back but you are not allowed to make a fist and punch back. [Chuckles] I can probably shove the person back all the way to the locker.

Me: I just want you to know that we will not be mad at you for defending yourself. I also want to let you know that, although your friends seem to know better than to use ‘gay’ or ‘fag’ in front of grownups, if I hear them using these words, I will call them out on it.

Son: Just make sure you don’t do it to someone who can beat me up! Can I go to bed now?

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I am not sure what I should/could do. I am still in shock while at the same time feeling embarrassed by my naiveté for being shocked at all.

I did not grow up here. I did not experience anything like this: Not name calling. Not having words unapproved by adults hurled at you. To this day I cannot curse in Chinese; that’s how effective cultural and social conditioning combined with physical punishment, or simply the threat of it, is in disciplining children. And behold: Surprise surprise! All the news about bullying did not prepare me for when it actually happened to my own child. Obviously I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about when I was running my mouth. Please accept my sincere apology.

In all honesty, what my son is living with now is mild compared to some of the horror stories we have heard. But it still hurts. It hurts so much. My son is a part of me. When he is hurting, my heart hurts too. I can actually feel the pain inside my chest. It is already rousing all the primal maternal instincts I have. “You mess with my family? You mess with me.” And I’ve already had to calm myself the fuck down.

I cannot imagine having to deal with full-blown bullying as a parent. I cannot imagine having to deal with it as a child.

Deep down, I am wondering whether name calling truly is a lot more sinister: The school district does have a Zero Tolerance policy but only if there is physical contact. (And I am not going to spell out what is going through my mind right now. It suffices to say, IF they touch my son, it is open season). For words, mere words, there is nothing you can do about it, realistically. What’s the school going to do? There is no proof. And even if there is, what kind of punishment is the school going to dole out? Telling them to not do it again? “Be nice!” Slap the kids’ hands?

Hardy har har. Big fucking deal.

HOW FUCKING STUPID IS THIS?!

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I suck. I seriously do. Full of hot air. Nothing more. It’s been only one night, and I am ready to strike a bargain with the devil to make all this magically go away.

Why didn’t anybody tell me how awful it is going to be? Perhaps someone should have included this in the book “What to Expect When You Have Children”: Prepared to feel murderous rage against other teens but of course you cannot act on it and to feel the primordial urge to protect your young no matter what but of course you cannot do so when they are in school.

If I had known bringing up children in the United States of America means watching them being called names and not being able to do a fucking damned thing about it, I would not have married an American.

If I had known bringing up children means you have to sit and watch their innocence being stripped away bit by bit at the school yard where they are supposed to be fucking safe and protected, I would have hesitated.

I am most likely blowing everything up out of proportion. But this is how I feel right now.