Can You Tell I'm Chinese By My Eyes?

This past week, Alvin and I stopped in Midland/Odessa, Texas (where the Bush's used to live) on our way home.

And I learned a lesson there: I am a city-ist. I made assumptions about the city being racist, and in the end, I learned that I am the one with prejudices against the city.

Alvin and I stopped at a gas station where it was connected to the Subway and McDonald's. We were sitting there eating a subway sandwich when a kid kept staring at me. She kept running up to me and staring at me. She didn't stare at Alvin, just me. The mom kept yelling, "Brianne, come back here. Stop bothering those people." But Brianne kept coming by.

So I started thinking that she was staring because we were Asians, and maybe she has never seen Asians before. And so I started thinking about how kids used to make fun of Asians by pulling at the corner of their eyes to make them slanted. About the third time Brianne came by, she started bringing her fingers to her eyes. I thought to myself, "oh here comes the eye pull."

Instead, she takes her fingers to her eyes, and starts pulling them apart vertically. She says, "why are your eyes SO BIG?"

I started laughing. Haha, she wasn't interested in us because we were Asians, she was interested in me because I have huge eyes. She wasn't racist, she was curious at my bigger than usual size eyes.

So I learned my lesson about judging Odessa/Midland.

By the way, I started thinking about the kids back in elementary school that pulled their eyes at me and said, "Chinese, Japanese." Could they not see that my eyes are probably bigger than theirs? I clearly could see that.