My Life as a Coconut, Part 1

It's a long-running joke among my friends that I'm whiter than they are. Especially 10+ years ago, when to them I was the whitebread, McDonald's-eating, network-TV-watching, middle-class mainstream suburbanite who had to learn to eat exotic foods. This of course ignored the fact that every few years I'd travel the world and have to "go native" in other continents, but for the most part, it was true. And except for my skin tone and name, I'm still pretty white today. Ethnically, I'm not an oreo or a twinkie, but I guess you could say I'm a coconut -- brown on the outside and white on the inside.

But growing up, I always felt pretty colorblind. I don't remember having any problems when I was really young in my hometown of New Orleans, except that other kids wouldn't always get my name right. But my solution was simply to use my parents' dial-wheel labelmaker thing to punch out my name in raised white letters on a red label and stick it to the back of my tricycle. Problem solved.

Even in Greenville, South Carolina, home at the time of the "no interracial dating" campus of Bob Jones University, I don't remember any racial or ethnic problems. All but one of my friends were white, and probably half or more were girls (a pretty good mirror of today, come to think of it). No one ever had a problem with that as far as I knew.

Once we got to the suburbs of Houston, I somehow became even more naively colorblind. Asians were actually the biggest minority in our area, so all through elementary school, jr. high, and high school, my friends tended to be a random mix of whites and Asians. Seemed perfectly normal to me and everyone else. My school was still overwhelmingly white, though; Asians made up all of 12% of the student body, with all other minorities even less than that. I remember in high school, there were times when I'd look around one of my classes halfway into the year and realize I was the only non-white in that classroom. This was rarely the case -- orchestra, not surprisingly, was nearly half Asian -- but it did happen a few times. But I'd never felt out of place, and no one had ever made me feel like I didn't belong. The only times I felt different were when I visited relatives overseas; if I heard someone in a store speaking English, especially with an American accent, I'd feel the urge to start a conversation with my family loud enough for the Americans to hear that proved I was an American too.

My colorblind view was shattered when I started at UT. I was suddenly in an environment where 99.99999% of the people didn't know me, and there were a ton of foreign students on campus. Not first-generation Asian-Americans, like back home in Houston, but actual foreigners with foreign accents. It didn't take me long to wonder if people assumed I was a foreigner because of my skin tone. The security of having everyone know I was as American as they were was gone.

Still, as far as I knew, I never faced any real overt racism in college. If people did assume I was foreign, I either didn't find out or they quickly learned otherwise upon hearing me speak. Nevertheless, I did feel the need to prove I was an American much more acutely in college, like I did when I traveled abroad.

When I started my first job, I wasn't sure what they would think of me. But it didn't take long for me to get established in the social circle and get comfortable that people knew who I was and where I came from. And so even at subsequent jobs, I never worried again about being perceived as a foreigner. I figure my American accent ... and the fact that I'm a writer, not a developer ... speaks for itself.

So, I feel lucky that I can count on one hand the number of times I've felt anything the slightest bit racist. These events involve Kansas City, a little town in Arkansas, a little town in Oklahoma, Southern Baptists, and China. Yes, China. Stay tuned for part 2 of "My Life as a Coconut," to follow sometime in the next few days.

Cruising along

HBO is showing Titanic this month. Hadn't actually seen it since Erik, Tamara, Lisa, and I saw it in 1998 in the theater. So over the past couple of weeks I've caught parts of the movie here and there. It's a good background movie when you're doing other things. Plus, Kate Winslet is naked! (That last sentence sounds like spam).

Anyway, watching the scenes of them on deck and by the ornate stairway are making me really long to go on a cruise again.


...without all that iceberg-hitting, lifeboat-launching, mass drowning stuff, of course...


(on an unrelated note, I'm starting to catch up on the Layoff Times again)

Making rice krispies

Yikes.

I came home from GNO just now and was surprised to note that the house smelled like cooking rice. Then it dawned on me.

OH. SHIT.

Six hours earlier, I'd started cooking rice for dinner. I was short on time, so I'd scooped out some mostly cooked rice midway through to go with my baked catfish. I left the rest of the rice simmering on a low heat to finish cooking. Meanwhile, I ate dinner.

And then I left the house.

Not once did I think about the still-cooking rice on the stove. Not while I ate, not while I was driving to GNO, not while I pulled into my driveway hours later. Only when the pleasant smell of cooking rice hit me did I realize what I'd done.

Fortunately, no harm no foul, except to a cup of rice. At least I'd turned the gas way down. The pot held a now yellowish and crispy mass of rice. Slipped out of my teflon-coated pot into the trash easily. No mess. The rice didn't burn. Didn't even form tahdeeg.

Needless to say, I consider myself pretty lucky that nothing bad happened. But Jesus Christ, I'm a fucking idiot...

Heading to the polls

I'm not a very good voter. The first 9 years I was of voting age, I only voted in presidential elections. It wasn't until 1998 that I voted in my first non-presidential election. And during non-presidential, non-congressional election years? My track record is horrible.

Today, I'm heading to the polls. I don't know anything about eight of the state constitutional amendments on the ballot. Not yet, anyway; I will read them before I head out. But the reason I'm voting today is to vote against Proposition 2, the amendment to define marriage as a man and a woman only and outlaw everything else.

I've always been on the fence about the whole gay marriage issue. I'm used to marriage being a husband and wife only. However, I've always thought civil unions were a good idea and a viable alternative for those who want it. Because it does make sense that gay partners would need some sort of legal protection the same way a husband and wife would.

What's forced me off the fence are the arguments made against gay marriage. I honestly don't believe that gay marriages dilute the power of straight marriages. I really don't see how that affects them at all. Would the divorce rate get any worse if gay marriages were allowed? Would the "fabric of our society" really be ripped to shreds by something like that? Whether gays can marry doesn't affect my feeling of whether I want a wife or not. Why should it really affect any other straight person?

But the main thing that disturbs me about these "protection of marriage" arguments is that many of them sound similar to the arguments used against interracial marriage in the past. And as a half-breed myself who fully expects to marry a girl who isn't my exact ethnicity (if I ever get married, of course), that hits a little closer to home for me. I sure as hell don't want someone using all this to turn the clock back even further and arguing that I can't marry a girl who doesn't share my skin tone because that's "an abomination" or "not what God intended."

And worst of all, this proposition appears to rule out civil unions. I may not be entirely used to the idea of gay weddings, but outlawing civil unions?! Even if you're totally against gay marriage, we already have a law forbidding same-sex marriages. Why do we need to get rid of civil unions too?

As I understand it, marriage is supposed to be about stability. I don't see how encouraging more stable couples to form harms society. I don't see civil unions as harmful. I see this amendment as overreaching and pointless and unnecessary. And so, even with no national candidates on the ballot, I'm breaking out of my voter apathy and actually going out to vote...

NOTE: After I posted this the first time, I learned that even civil unions are already illegal in Texas. Shows what I know. Still, I figure it's already law, let's not amend the state constitution. If there are court challenges to the laws, let's see what happens...

The first burn, part 2

Well, as I predicted, I just had to switch from the heater back to the a/c. Ah, Texas weather...

(Actually, it's been a beautiful weekend, and it's only in the mid-80s outside, but the house warmed up just enough that I needed that extra cooling boost inside. So I'm not complaining; it's just funny how the Texas seasons go.)