Disgrasian
Add being nicknamed “Fried Rice” to my sister’s “Spring Roll” on our Park Slope softball team to the list of human ignorances. Then add, “WHAT UP BITCHES” to the list of things I said when my sister became the starting pitcher and I had the team’s highest RBIs. Finally, picture me doing this victory dance. That only because I do it so well.
“We moved from College Station to a town outside of Houston the summer before 6th grade. I remember the first high school football game I went to that fall. I was 10 going on 11, one of the youngest in my class, one of the smallest in my class, a bag of bones with buckteeth. The football stadium was a huge concrete behemoth, astro-turfed, professionally lit. Even though I’d moved from College Station, home to a Division I college football team, and I’d gone to Aggie games, already committed the story of the 12th man to memory, sat on my dad’s shoulders during The Aggie Bonfire–a world record-worthy totem to A&M’s rivalry with UT–and even struck up a correspondence with then-Coach Jackie Sherrill, I was dazzled. Texas 5-A football is its own mythical beast. I remember as I walked down the concrete steps of that stadium with my new friends, I understood I was in a hallowed place.
And that’s when I heard someone from the stands, on our side, yell “CHING CHONG CHING CHONG CHING CHONG CHING CHONG.”
I kept walking like it never happened. More than feeling wounded over what I’d heard, I felt mortified that my friends might have heard what I’d heard. If they did, if they’d heard the worst that could be said about me, they’d think of me differently. How could they not? Naturally, I remember nothing else about that game. Who I was with, whose parents drove me home, who won or lost the game. None of it.”
Chink In The Stands, An Asian American Fan’s Notes | DISGRASIAN™ (via jasmined)
