I don’t care what people think of me, because of my self-realization that I was an asshole in fifth grade.
During a late night, non-sleeping time (you know, those times when you’re supposed to be sleeping, but you can’t, so you’re just lying there, staring at the ceiling, maybe sometimes closing your eyes, thinking, “If I pretend I’m sleeping, maybe I will.”), my girlfriend said to me, “How are you so confident?” Actually, maybe that’s not what she said, I think it was, “How come you don’t care what people think about you?” There’s a big difference between confidence, and not caring what people think of you. I don’t think I’m confident. Hell, I know I’m not confident. I mean, I’m confident to a point. We all are. For example: I’m confident that I will be able to change a flat tire, if I got one on my car. I’ve done it before, and I know the problems that can occur (over-torqued lug nuts/bolts), and I have the brainpower to think of ways to get around those problems (T=r x F, the equation for torque is your friend).
Am I confident that everything that I do will be a success? Of course not. Is anyone? Maybe. I don’t know those people. Am I confident that I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing? Nope, because I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s no list things you’re supposed to be doing, is there? No one has showed one to me.
But, going back to the question, do I not care what people think about me? Yes. Why? Well, this is going to sound bad, possibly horrible, but I think I’m like this because of racism. Good ol’ fashioned racism made me not care what people say about me.
In case you can’t tell from my little profile pic, I am Asian. Filipino, to be exact. And since I can remember, I’ve always been on the receiving end of racist comments. When I was 3 or 4, my family moved from the West side of Cleveland to Brunswick, I Southwest suburb…full of white people. There were no people of color, well, except us. I remember going to pre-school, and watched kids make the ‘slant-eye’ thing with their fingers on their faces. When I was in kindergarten, I remember hiding under a table, Kleenex in hand, crying (because I did NOT want to be in school, not when I could be at home playing with my Matchbox cars in my front yard), and another classmate slid under the table. He looked at me, and said, “Are you eating your tissue? Ching Chong?” Then he left to play with the rest of the kids…the rest of the white kids. I was the only Asian there.
These racist incidents went on for almost every year of my life as a kid. In second grade, I started at St. Ambrose, a Catholic elementary school. That was fine, because for once, I wasn’t the only Asian kid: my sister was in seventh grade. And later, a two more Asians would come in one grade ahead of me. So, cool, right? No more racism, right?Well, the obvious racist comments stopped, but somehow they morphed into “you’re weird and different from the rest of us”-types of comments. “You eat rice everyday? You’re weird.” “Your parents speak funny.” “Do you know karate?” (Okay, that one is still blatantly racist.) And I’m not going to lie and say that I just brushed off these comments. I remember being really upset one day, and I told my parents.
“Kids were saying that it’s weird that we eat rice everyday. And sometimes they make comments about how I’m Chinese. Call me ‘ching chong’. But I’m not. I’m Filipino.”
My mom would always say, “Just ignore them.” That was her advice. Ignore them. My dad, he would give me advice that wasn’t as, uh, non-confontational.
“Tell them they are ignorant white monkeys! YOU ARE IGNORANT! Tell them.”
I think I used that line one time. Result: kids don’t know what ‘ignorant’ means. Wait…they’re ignorant of the word ignorant. LOLZ. Ha. Sorry.
What I found that made a difference, what made me not be ‘different’ in their eyes, was to be just like them. Like the things they like. Eat the same kinds of lunches they had. That meant telling my mom that I don’t want pieces of Chicken Adobo on a buttered Pan de Sal, and instead I wanted peanut butter & belly, or bologna. And this ‘assimilation’ thing worked. Kids didn’t tease me for being weird. They moved on to making fun of me for not being athletic, or wearing glasses, you know, normal kid teasing. And I was fine with it. Just act like these white kids, and you won’t get hassled much.
In fifth grade, I remember we had some sort of social studies project, where we had to interview our parents, asking them where they are from, how they met, etc. And we went around the room, and each kid gave the details of their interview. I remember specifically that one of the questions was, “How long were your parents engaged?” I have NO FUCKIN’ IDEA why that is an important question, but it was on that sheet of paper. The teacher went around the room, and each kid gave their answers. Strangely, when that question came around, everyone kept saying, “3 months” or “6 months” or “1 month”. My answer was “6 years”. My parents were engaged for 6 years, because they waited until they were done with medical school before they got married. It seems pretty straight forward to 42 year old me, but 10 year old me was FREAKING OUT. The teacher got closer and closer to calling on me, and no one had said that their parents were engaged more than 6 months. I didn’t want to stand out. I didn’t want to be the ‘weird kid’. I didn’t want to rock the boat. “Six months…my parents were engaged for six months,” I muttered. I lied. I lied about my parents. Because I just wanted to be normal. I didn’t want to be made fun of. I just wanted to be like everyone else. And I felt terrible.
I think that was the start. The start of me realizing that this all sucks. I didn’t want to be different, but I didn’t want to lie about who I am. I was tired of not being me, but I was scared, because I didn’t want to be teased again.
In fifth grade, a new kid came into our class, Shawn Powers. I’m not going to lie, he was a strange one. From what I remember, he was short, he was blonde, and had a face that was a cross between Marty Feldman, and that pre-historic squirrel from the Ice Age movies. He had these strange bug-eyes. And that kid must’ve hit puberty early, because his arms were as hairy as the arms of the late Robin Williams. But what was good, at least in my eyes at the time, was that he was the ‘new’ weird kid. “Who gives a shit about Carl, when we got this kid to make fun of?” And that’s how it was. Shawn Powers was picked on, he was shoved, he was the butt of the “you have weird eyes”-joke, for once, and not me. His eyes were bulgy, not slanty.
One day, it was close to lunch time, and kids were milling around. Over in the corner of the room, near my desk, a couple of classmates were playing “keep away”…with Shawn Powers’ lunch. They were tossing it back and forth, high above Shawn’s head. He was angry, and he wanted to cry, you could hear it in his voice. “Come on guys! Quit it!” I walked close to my desk, and I heard, “Carl! Catch!” A brown paper bag flew through the air, into my hands. I tossed it back to the kid, watching Shawn scramble to try to intercept his lunch. They threw the lunch to me again, and I thought, “They like me! This is the first time they ever let me do something like this!” Yeah, this was the first time they ever let me bully someone, instead of being bullied. That’s great. This is what it’s like to be them. And I hated it. I hated that I was keeping this kid from his lunch. And I hated that, for a moment, I felt like I needed to do this, because it was payback for all the times I’ve been picked on. And I think at that moment, I realized how all this works. Bullying someone else as payback for you being bullied yourself does nothing. It doesn’t make anything better. It makes you feel like shit. It makes you wish that none of this ever happened.
This ‘lunch keep away’ thing went on for a few minutes, and I continued to play. With each toss, I looked at the other kids laughing, and then I looked at Shawn. And this…wasn’t right. I know how he felt. I was him. I was the one who was different. The brown paper bag got tossed to me, and I didn’t throw it back. Shawn ran up to me, he was on the verge of crying, and probably on the verge of punching me in the face. I handed the bag to him. I remember the look he gave me. It was a cross between “What the fuck are you doing??” and “Yeah, you better give that back to me!” and “You’re weird.”
The other guys yelled, “Awww, come on, Carl. You suck!” And they shoved me. I didn’t shove back. I just went to my desk, to eat my lunch…of peanut butter and jelly. I didn’t even want my lunch. Come on, pb & j doesn’t fill you up. I wanted what my mom used to make for me. And I didn’t care what anyone would say.
For the next three years at that school, I was back to being the weird kid. I remember even being teased for being different by Shawn Powers. I didn’t fight back, or call him an ignorant white monkey. I just did what my mom told me to do. “Ignore them.” I just didn’t care anymore what anyone thought of me. I’m me. My family is my family. This is how we are. There’s no point in putting so much time and energy into being accepted by other people, especially if you have to change who you are. And especially if the people you’re trying to gain acceptance from aren’t important to you and don’t give a shit about who you really are.
It’s true. I don’t care what people think of me. But I do care about the people I love, and the people who love me. I care what these people think of me. I want them to be themselves. I want them to know they don’t have to change to be something they’re not, for my acceptance. I’ll always accept them. I want them to know that I love them for who they are. And those ignorant white monkeys can go to hell.
