Category Archives: Wait…Was That…?

Wait…was that racist?

30 Monday Apr 2012

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I have to admit, I am a tad bit reluctant to share this story with the world. To date, its only be recounted once to my husband, and of course laughed at hysterically by those who were present. And no, the innocent will not remain nameless…

Allow me to introduce the witnesses, my best friends @cindasmommy and @littlemisphd (Feel free to follow them on the twitter). Little Miss PhD (and yes, she is a doctor) currently resides in D.C., and in her spare time, enjoys reading, watching fantasy nonsense on t.v., and dancing lewdly and suggestively in gold lame’. She invited me and Cinda’s Mommy (who is actually Jacinda’s Mommy) down for the weekend to do hood rat stuff with her, and also catch one of these vulgar performances. We were delighted.

After brunch (‘cause that’s what bougie chicks do – we brunch) that included all-you-can-drink mimosas, Little Miss PhD the Dancing Girl had to go to rehearsal, leaving me and Cinda’s Mommy to our own devices, which meant walking to the nearest Nordstrom to pillage their shoe racks…

The car was parked, we cut through this alley, and as we entered the back entrance of the theater and attempted to walk down the hallway, a small man quickly enters the hallway from the left…He entered the hallway so quickly that one could even say he “jumped” into the hallway…THAT is my defense (and the mimosas!), by the way, because he entered the hallway SO QUICKLY, it was almost cat-like…like a ninja.

So I said, “Wha-taaaaaah!”

You know, karate sounds…

Which would be totally appropriate as he jumped into the hallway LIKE A NINJA who wanted to karate fight. However,

He was Asian. And he wasn’t trying to karate fight.

Which makes this story totally racist.

Cinda’s Mommy collapsed in an adjacent doorway and began to convulse with laughter. We literally had to pull her off the floor. Little Miss PhD, in her effort to remove me from people who may know her, began to give VERY,VERY specific directions as to how to get out of the building before I could offend anyone else as there were also White people, Hispanic people, and other Black people who I could yell racial epithets at.

“Okay, go down this hallway, ok? You will see stairs, ok? Go DOWN those stairs, ok? There will be a door at the bottom of those stairs, ok? Go out that door and make a right, and Nordstrom will be a block on your right. Ok?”

The worst part about the story is that my ignorance was TOTALLY INVOLUNTARY, which, as far as I’m concerned makes it totally not racist. You ACT like a ninja, Asian or not, people will treat you like one and make karate sounds when you walk by.

But ESPECIALLY if you’re Asian.

I’m pretty sure they don’t ALL know martial arts. However this one teaches break dancing so I BET he could kick the shit out of anyone at any time…like a ninja… who just so happens to be Asian. I’d also like to add the fact that I don’t think he heard me in all the hustle and bustle in that hallway. And IF said Asian gentleman heard me, he did not respond…Which clearly makes him the better person. *clenches fist* Dammit!

Its situations like this that make me painfully aware of not only my very awkward, sometimes stunted social skills, but of my own deep-seeded (or is it seated? Ceded? Someone help me put here) biases. In the wake of the Trayvon Martin incident, I couldn’t help but reflect on the fact that what I had said was exactly the kind of thing that not only was something very similar to what an asshole would do, but also the kind of thing that validates stereotypes and invalidates the individual. If I had seen my own child do that, I would have been mortified, and they would have been IN TROUBLE… like flip flop in the bathroom kind of trouble. So, I really gotta do better.

And for the record, I’m not a racist. One of my good friends is half Japanese. And yes, I am fully aware that these are the very same things that racists say… So to all my Asian friends, I am sorry and I mean it. Don’t feel so bad about clutching your purses now.

BUT, in spite of my apparent racism, I still bought 3 pairs of shoes for $125…POW…

Wait…was that wrong?

09 Monday Apr 2012

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The game is over. We won. Another win for the #5 ranked black team, trouncing the orange team, 7-0. I’m standing on the brick wall that serves as a second set of bleechers, heels kicked off and feet sunning on the warm concrete, watching the boys practice batting, ever aware of the menacing foul ball.

If you’ve ever been to a little league game, you’ll know that these kids hit the balls all over the place. Last week a kid hit a foul ball that *almost* killed a woman riding her bike and the week before that, a foul ball hit a passing car, and another damn near put a hole thorugh the roof of the coach’s truck. These balls are dangerous. So,when someone yells, “LOOK OUT!” i am, of course, overwhelmed with fear, my life flashes before my eyes, and i duck for cover, knowing this is the part where my head gets bashed in by a baseball and I die, leaving behind my most prized possession, my iPad.

This now means i have to watch the game or practice close enough to know where the balls are at.all.times (these kids aren’t getting my iPad!). This isn’t fun as it cuts into my suburban mom socializing where we talk about exciting things like the location of the best TJ Maxx or the boys’ latest rash, but its better than those 3 seconds of terror i experience when i hear “LOOK OUT!” and don’t know where the damn ball is.

I step down off the wall, barefoot into the grass, and turn to watch the field. In front of me sits another mom, texting feverishly on her cell phone. So enthralling was this text messaged conversation, that she failed to watch a boy at bat hit several foul balls into traffic, and even failed to look up at the shrill screams of “LOOK OUT!!” as a slow moving foul ball made a wide arch over the foul ball fence, and came down towards the top of her head.

As in movies, things tend to slow down when your life is in peril. I watched the ball glance off the top side of the bat, and saw it rotate backward, slowing down to the point where i could read “Made in the U.S.A.” I was able to predict its trajectory, and was able to shout “LOOK OUT!” 4 times before i heard the solid *thud* of the baseball as it hit the top left quadrant of her head. It seemed so slow that you could see the rotation stop the second it made contact, and actually sit on her head a second to say hello before it rolled away.

Silence.

Are you okay? Someone who wasn’t me asked, even though i was the closest person to her. “I’m fine,” she said, as she got up to start walking it off. I said to myself, You just got hit in the head with a baseball. Honestly, this isnt the time to man up and act like it didnt hurt because i SAW the ball hit you in the head. Hell, the ball even said it hurt.

Ball: It hurt like a mug.

At that moment i looked up at one of the dads, who just so happened to be walking from another direction and saw the whole thing. But instead of rushing to her side, and saying, “ OMG, are you okay?” he let out the loudest guffaw i have ever heard at someone else’s expense. He laughed so hard IN HER FACE that she finally acknowledged that she was hurt so that she could avoid this man’s mockery, and was escorted to the snack shack for an ice pack, his hoots of laughter following her all the way there. At some point he stopped laughing. Until she returned with a bag of ice on her head, and then he started laughing all over again. I mean full-on belly laugh.

To be honest, seeing her get hit in the head with that baseball was a little funny. Like honestly, if she were on Tosh.0, she’d need a web redemption. It was BAD. But i knew it would be in poor taste to laugh at someone’s potentially serious injury so i didn’t.

However, no one said i couldn’t laugh at the dad who won’t stop laughing at someone else’s potentially serious injury… Which looks like i was laughing at the injury but i wasnt!

I swear!

So practice ends. That dad never apologizes, and the bump on her head was gone by the next week’s game…At which she pulled out her phone, and started to text away…then stopped and went to her car.

Lesson learned…