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My Turn
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From The Asian Reporter, V29, #15 (August 5, 2019), page 6.
A childhood memory I’d rather forget
If you believe my wife Maya or son Tyler, apparently I have a lousy memory.
How do I know that? Well, probably because they keep saying things like, "You never remember anything!"
I understand why they’d think that. There are a few Italian restaurants we frequent and I can never remember their names. But it’s not really my fault.
You see, it’s the names of the restaurants:
1) Villa Capri
2) Capri Blu
3) La Cucina di Capri
(I looked them up for the sake of this column.)
You might notice that each restaurant has the word "Capri." I don’t speak Italian, and even for the purpose of this column, I did not look up the word to see what it means. Therefore, it means nothing to me, so I’ve never bothered to remember the names. When I want to go there, I say something like, "Let’s go to the Italian restaurant next to Target" or "Let’s go to the Italian restaurant where we sat by that huge dog out on the terrace that one time."
I trust that Maya knows which Capri I’m talking about.
Something in the news recently made me realize that what may be the key to remembering things is having meaning.
If you were following the headlines last month, you’re likely aware of the tumult surrounding President Trump tweeting that four congresswomen of color should "go back" from where they came, even though three of the four were born in the U.S. and the fourth immigrated to the U.S. and became a citizen in her teens.
The same thing happened to me — nearly 45 years ago — but I still remember it vividly.
I was in fifth grade. Two of my best friends at the time were named David and Jeff. They, along with nearly everyone in my elementary school, were white. Of course, except me.
The three of us got along really well. But I must say what brought us together was that the three of us were really good at playing tetherball. Tetherball, for those who haven’t played, is a game in which two people stand around a pole and hit a ball tied to the pole to see who can wrap the ball all the way around the pole in one direction or the other.
David, I remember, was particularly good at the game. Once he got started, he could tap the ball repeatedly as it swung around the pole and keep it completely out of the reach of his opponent. My technique was basically to hit the ball so hard that it would swing around the pole four or five times before my opponent could even touch it.
We were the kings of recess tetherball.
One day, at the end of recess, Jeff announced he had learned a new word for me. The word was "chink."
He was amused with his new word. With a smile on his face, he’d shout, "How’s it goin’, chink?" At first I tried to laugh it off. But then, when David heard it, he started saying it, too.
For the next several weeks, I was bombarded with the word.
They thought it was hilarious. They thought it was especially funny when they would address me with something fairly mundane and end it with that word. Something like, "Did you finish all your homework today, CHINK?" Or "What did you bring for lunch today, CHINK?"
They would double over in laughter each time.
On one of the last days of school before summer break, the two of them were pretty relentless. I tried to play it cool, but nothing I said would make them stop.
And then I heard, "Go back to where you came from, Chink!"
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I turned away from them, because I didn’t want them to see me cry.
After a moment, I thought to myself, I’m ten years old. I’ve never even been to China. At the time, I’d never even really been out of the state.
I didn’t see David and Jeff during summer break. I really didn’t want to. When summer ended and we went to sixth grade, I would see them in class. The taunting had stopped. So had the tetherball — as well as any friendships.
Can it be simply chalked up to the juvenile behavior of some kids? I don’t think so.
All I can say is that I still remember agonizing over the thought that these two were my best friends, and for the first time in my life, I felt like an "other." It’s been almost 45 years and, while I love my life with friends and family whom I truly cherish, that pain from my childhood has stayed with me all this time.
It’s a memory I’ll never forget.
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