Since coming home to the U.S. two years ago, I’ve been diligent to not stick out like I’m Fresh Off the Boat (FOB). Call it a matter of pride since I did spend the first eleven years of my life in America. Since coming back, the U.S. has of course grown in leaps and bounds in immigrants, many of which naturally carry their cultural habits with them, and as a result, are sometimes ridiculed or reviled for let’s say things like driving, and not picking up after themselves when eating at a fast food place. And because I have brown skin, it’s easy to automatically assume that I’m a “porainer”.
Is there anything wrong with being FOB? No. Is there anything wrong with my pride in possibly being identified as FOB? Yes.
Truth be told, I’ve had to jump quite a few cultural hurdles. It’s not easy returning to a place you knew as a child only to find it different from how you remember it. There weren’t as many cereal flavors in 1980! Nor were there row upon row of Coca-Cola variations! And bank cards? Whoah. I hardly ever carry cash.
Either these things were around and I just didn’t know about them because I was eleven and lived in Portland—very not cosmopolitan compared to let’s say, New York— or they really weren’t.
So the place where I work has a quarterly Fun Day where the entire office, a whopping total of twenty-something people, abandons their desks for half a day of. . . fun. (We go dutch.) Last quarter’s was Star Trek at the Imax! This ones was lunch at McDougal’s, Cool Springs, before bowling. Chicken fingers and wings before hitting pins.
Ubiquitous fast food red basket
McDougal’s serves their food in paper-lined red, plastic baskets. The kind that as you go to the exit to toss, you make sure to not throw the basket and just the lining and leftovers.
For some reason or other, I absentmindedly threw the entire thing—leftovers (hardly any), dirty napkin, paper lining, and RED BASKET—into the trash can before heading inside for their free ice cream. I returned to my table to behold my red basket apparently retrieved from said trash can, and to the stares of mortified colleagues. “Colleague X dug it out of the trash can for you!” Greeted me as I sat cheerfully sat down with 32 oz. serving of vanilla soft serve in hand.
It was my turn to be mortified. At the back of my mind, paranoia ensued. “She must be an immigrant,” other tables were probably thinking. “Probably a foreigner! Don’t know how ta pick up after herself!”
I couldn’t resist. “You know why that happened? Why I wasn’t thinking?” I said a little too loudly. Silence. “Because my mind is on work and not here!” I laughed.
I stole a glance at the other tables. White faces looked back unamused.
Whether my colleagues believed me or not is just something I rubbed off.
People will think what they will think.
As for me—two years after coming home—I’m almost over the fact that people will always see my brown skin.
