All right. No matter how hard I try. . . Just as I drift off to sleep. . .
I can’t wipe this damn smile off my face.
All right. No matter how hard I try. . . Just as I drift off to sleep. . .
I can’t wipe this damn smile off my face.
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!! EVERYONE’S IN MY HOUSE FOR MY BIRTHDAY!!
I guess I’m atypical.
I grew up in a predominantly Filipino neighborhood. Whenever I go back, I’m amazed at just how “Filipino” the area is. My neighborhood has no less than three Filipino bakeries, four or five mom and pop Filipino restaurants, Filipino markets, a high school that offered Tagalog as a foreign language, and a Jollibee.
A Jollibee.
I never came to hate being Filipino. I accepted it. It’s a part of me. I didn’t think it was particularly special or unique. Just different. What I grew to hate was the rampant self-destruction that I started witnessing when I became more self-aware. I noticed things.
When I was in grade school, I was watched by a series of babysitters in my neighborhood. These families had kids my age, but while I went to a private school, they went to public school.
One of the first babysitters I had was a young woman named Nancy. She basically took care of each and every child in the household while the mother was at work. Nancy was calm, self assure–until her mother came home. Whenever Nancy did anything wrong, no matter how miniscule, her mother would browbeat her. Nothing was good enough for her mother. One day, I remember her younger brother locked himself in a bathroom. He couldn’t figure out how to unlock the door so he started crying. Nancy didn’t have an emergency key, so she kept trying to unlock the door with a coat hanger. When her mother came home, she unlocked the bathroom door and then beat Nancy with her fists. Nancy was screaming and curled into a fetal position, trying to keep the blows from hitting her face.
The next babysitter I had was an older grandmother that would later save my brother’s life. This family had a teenager named Michael. I remember Michael because of all the screaming matches between him and his parents. That, and the red bandanna he always wore. Michael ended up stealing an RX-7 and plowing it into the side of an empty schoolbus. He was going so fast, the doctors say he died on impact. I remember going to the funeral. I was wearing khaki pants and a dark blue sportcoat because my mother never bought any black clothes for me. It was open casket although it shouldn’t have been. It was one of the only times I saw him without that bandanna.
I’ve got too many stories like this.
Friends on parole for shooting people. Children of doctors who lived at home and attended community college to humor their parents. Teenage mothers that gave up raising their own children, instead passing that responsibility on to the grandparents. Filipinos whose parents gave them everything they wanted, and yet they still failed. Filipinos who took every single advantage that their parents gave them and threw it all away. So many parents let down. Parents that only wanted a better life for their children.
I didn’t feel like I fit into my community, so I left.
When I left this morning at seven fifty-five, it was seventy-three degrees. I was contemplating going to the grocery store for lunch. I just recently checked weather.com and now it’s eighty-three degrees, it’s not even eleven o’clock and it’s predicted to get to ninety-three degrees today. I’m staying indoors.
This weekend was so chock full of things that I have to sit and process things tonight, just to get a grip on my own feelings about certain issues.
On Saturday, I volunteered at FAYD (Filipino American Youth Day). This is a series of seminars and discussions focused at high school Filipinos. I’m rather conflicted about the whole thing. Nothing bad or good, just conflicted.
“Hey, are you all twins?”
“No. No we’re not.”
I get this a lot when JungFroid and I go out. The thing is, he’s got about twenty thirty pounds on me, our skin tones are different, his facial structure is completely unlike mine, he has the ability to grow facial hair (I don’t), and well–we just look different. At least I think so. Other people don’t understand it either. Brothers, maybe. If you squint real hard. Twins–no.
Why do complete strangers think that we’re twins? I don’t know. It could be any number of things. We both have glasses. (Which are different.) We’ve got similar hair styles. We both work in the “tech” field. We’re roughly the same height, although he’s probably taller than me. Finally, there’s another factor that I don’t like to think counts–but there’s the fact that we’re both Filipino.
There is evidence that make me suspect that the outdated concept of “they all look alike” is the driving factor behind the twins comments. The majority of people that ask this question are caucasian or african-american. For the most part, other Filipinos have never assumed that we are twins, nor have they asked if we are brothers. Probably because they know what other Filipinos look like.
On the other hand, we could just look alike and I don’t see it. At least he’s a pretty good looking guy, so hey–I’m not complaining.