pieces of grace

To quote a seemingly innocent Ellen Page seeking revenge against pedophiles in the movie Hard Candy, it is, indeed, time to wake up. Well, for me, anyway. In a mere 4 days, I shall be embarking upon the miserable journey (or so I’ve heard) of a first-semester senior. And I’m not exactly looking forward to being overwhelmed by a slew of schoolwork, exhausting extracurriculars, and, of course, the biggie: college applications. Someone recently asked me how come I haven’t burned out yet in all these years of high school, and I guess the answer is I’m kind of burning out right now, at a most inopportune time. But in all honesty, I am feeling a little lost in the whole college application process. There seem to be a lot of opportunities, but, then again, compared to all the competitive genius kids my age (of which there are millions), my accomplishments (which seem to be diminishing daily by closer inspection) don’t seem quite enough. Not that I ever really thought they would be enough. Right now I’m just worried about a lot of things, primarily the essays, since I’m not a particularly strong writer (just ask my English teachers). But really, what can I do? Now isn’t the time to try working on my literary skills, though I do know it’s relatively early on in the actual application process. Since playtime is now officially over, it’s time for me to stop trying my poor attempts at humor on this blog and focus on the stuff I should be focusing on. So forgive me if you don’t hear from me within the next 3 months (that’s rather unlikely, though, since I get ideas and want to write them right away). Before I take my indefinite leave of absence, though, I have two last anecdotes to share, which I decided were not good enough to be entries on their own.

“A Rant on Those Ghetto Asian Shopkeepers Who Pretend They Don’t Have A Restroom of Any Kind” (aka Yet Another Bathroom Story)

I recently paid an exclusive visit to the Asian parts of Los Angeles. I asked my dad why LA didn’t have a Chinatown. (every time we go somewhere, we always pay a visit to that city’s very own Chinatown) My dad answered that the area we were in was basically shaped like a bell, and that was the LA Chinatown. Aka LA doesn’t need one because it’s already flooded with the Chinese population. Reaching our favorite 99 Ranch plaza, I was disappointed to find that the big Asian department store there had been closed down for remodeling. But I needn’t worry. My mother had already done the research 2 weeks before and found a cute Korean-esque boutique across the street for me. We made our way across the back of the plaza to a sketchy-looking area and entered the store. Not long after, I was plagued by nature’s calling and quickly rushed to the one employee at the cashier, asking if there was a bathroom.

Me (attempting to be casual, but really not good at hiding the urgency in my voice): “Hey, is there a bathroom here?”

Girl: “No, sorry, we don’t have one.”

Me (catching a glimpse of a bathroom right behind her that says Private): “Oh…okay, well, where’s the nearest bathroom?”

Girl: “Oh, we don’t have one in this area, so you’ll probably have to go across the street.”

What lies. There was clearly a bathroom in that store, and there were probably a lot of other ones in the surrounding ghetto shops. I mean, are you really asking me to believe that these sketchy shopkeepers didn’t have their own need to fulfill bodily functions in the middle of the day? Seeing as they can’t exactly leave their shop, where else would they have to go? I was rather furious with her at this point and wanted to say, “You might as well let me go here since there is a very strong possibility that I will buy clothing from you.” Fortunately, I controlled my tongue and walked across the street. The first stop was Tapioca Express. I rushed in and, to my delight, found a bathroom after boldly pacing across the cafe, trying to ignore the many stares that soon came my way. I restrained the urge to jump up and scream for victory when I saw Women sign on the door, but then…I noticed another sign that read, “Please ask for key.” So here it was, a sign that was clearly meant for those people like me, who walk into Tapioca for the sole purpose of using their bathroom. It was such a clever ploy to make us feel guilty that it succeeded with me. I was too embarrassed to walk up to the counter and ask for the key when it was quite apparently that I was not a paying customer. Sorely disappointed, I stalked out of Tapioca and tried my luck at Nubi, a new froyo place that’s to Socal as Yogurtland is to Norcal. And though I had to wait because there was only one bathroom in the entire store, and then deal with the disgusting cigarette smell from the previous user, I managed to succeed. Though hardly triumphantly.

“Idiomatically Challenged”

While I have spent all my years in the US and am a very firm American citizen, I still struggle with the English language – particularly in the idiom department. For example, I failed to understand “just what the doctor ordered.” My most notable incident this year was when we were supposed to write a parody of Pope’s “Rape of the Lock” and the prompt instructed us to create our own “tempest in a teapot.” Like the stupid, idiomatically-challenged idiot I am, I thought that the “tempest in a teapot” part was our prompt and was ready to literally write about a storm in a teacup until my friend (poor girl) was confused by my interpretation and proceeded to ask the teacher for clarification (thankfully none of this happened in class). My English teacher couldn’t help laughing at my idiocy, but nicely explained that “tempest in a teapot” was an idiom. I was incredibly embarrassed and made the casual remark that I seem to have difficulty with idioms, to which my teacher replied: “Grace, were you born in America?” I glanced up at her face, sure she was joking, but no, she was deadly serious. And I had to humbly admit that, yes, I was a full-blood citizen and have lived here all my life. Needless to say, I left her room rather deflated – was I that bad that she actually had question my years of learning English? That’s probably an overreaction, but still, this incident made it official: I am strongly idiomatically challenged (along with being vertically challenged and all that good stuff).

I think I pretty much fulfill every Chinese-American/Asian stereotype there is to fulfill. Over-academically conscious, major fob (see previous post), cheap and stingy, and last but not least, a conspirator in the crime of piracy. I only became truly aware of this tragic fact when recently a woman commented on the cuteness of my purse, and my automatic response was “It’s fake.” Realizing that this reply would spur the start of a conversation I would rather not get into, I bit my tongue at the absolute last second and restrained myself, coming up with a plain-old “Thanks,” though I’m sure the whole fake purse conversation would have been much more entertaining.

As I reflected on my naturally ingrained tendency to confess to piracy, I began to recognize just how far into piracy I am. My house is cluttered with pirated Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Fendi, and Lesporsac. I even have a pirated Pres shirt. To make a long story short, I purchased $5 shirts from the boys’ section in Wal-Mart and got them embroidered in Taiwan. You can tell the difference if you look very closely because the model for the P and the panther paw were both hurriedly sketched by my father, who – let’s be honest here – isn’t that great at making replicas of the real thing. Also, the fact that the buttons for my shirts are on the opposite side (a characteristic difference between boys’ and girls’ polo shirts that I discovered too late) gives me away.

Sadly, I am shameless when it comes to pirated goods and am honestly such a hack for them – though they do make for the best jokes. I guess I’m kind of a hypocrite that way. This was only reinforced by my parents’ recent trip to LA, where they came back with DVDs of quite a few movies still in theaters, such as Wanted, Hancock, and Kung Fu Panda. I groaned at the very sight of them, especially since they came in a $5 for 20 movies deal. Sure enough, each of the pirated movies were bad, filmed-in-the-theater-type quality, and, alas, the best action sequences in Wanted were blocked by an unwitting audience member who had a sudden burning desire to rush to the bathroom. As such, my father was highly upset when all he could see was 1/3 of the screen. Ah, the beauty of piracy.