They're friend, Lance, invited us to celebrate the Fourth of July with him at his dad's house, which was out in the country and therefore let us be as loud as possible. We didn't know that his whole family and some of their friends were going to be there, too. We also didn't take the time to think about the mentality of small town folks before arriving there.
Then we stepped inside his dad's house and immediately realized that Shelle and I were the only colored people there. It was kind of awkward at first, but Lance's younger sister, Caroline, was pretty loud and outspoken, so it wasn't always silent or anything, especially since we stuck to safe getting-to-know-you topics. I'm not sure if things got better or worse after TJ appeared, because on one hand, he and I started making Get Out jokes (but no one else understood them because they've never seen it! D:), and there was one more colored person there. On the other hand, the conversations kept on going back to race every once in a while.
Like, we get it. Everyone was trying to be respectful about race relations, especially about black people. Caroline even said that she dated a black person before (not helpful), but it just got tense and awkward around times, especially when she kept on talking about this viral transgendered post about how not just women have periods. It got super awkward because she kept on referring to the pictured person as an "it" rather than a person, even after TJ suggested her to just call the person them since we don't know their gender. Instead, she responded back that she was going to keep on referring to them as an "it" because she didn't know if they were a boy or a girl.
Are you kidding me???
Then, there was the whole gun issue. When we first stepped into the house, we saw a pink handgun just laying there on one of the low living room tables. Caroline didn't move her gun somewhere else safer and away from people until one of the dogs started sniffing at it! Then, throughout the night, she would occasionally threaten to shoot anyone who had a different opinion from her. I get that it was a joke, and she mainly said it to her brother and her childhood friends, so it was obviously just at people close to her, but really? That's just not something you joke about, especially in these times.
My respect for Jerry grew exponentially by the end of the night because I've only ever been exposed to good gun behavior due to him, my dad, and Kyle, and it was the exact opposite of how Caroline handled her gun. Jerry's the only one I know who actively carries, and he's a lot more responsible and safe when handling his guns around others than Caroline ever was. He puts his guns in safe areas where mainly he'll be able to reach it like the top of a fridge, he always checks to see if the safety's off before letting others hold his gun, and he never threatens to shoot anyone, especially as a joke, because he knows it's wrong.
So yeah, I left the party with mixed feelings, especially because of Caroline's joke towards the end of the night.
Shelle and I were talking to someone else when we heard Caroline saying some joke to TJ on the other side of the room when we heard her say something like "when we have two Chinese people here," and I instantly was shocked and then pissed. I get that it's a joke, but we're not close enough for herto be making racist jokes about us, especially when she got the wrong race. I'm sure that Lance has told her before that we're Vietnamese, and it was really irritating to be called Chinese even in a joke. But I was tired, it had been a long night of racial tension, and I didn't want to start something, so I just pretended to not have heard it and ignored it until we left the party.
Other than those instances, the party was pretty fun. I got to meet some new people, and I got to know TJ more, so we're friends now and will probably make plans to hangout soon. But just thinking back on those instances makes me irritated still, because I've never experienced such closed minded thinking and racism in my face in a long time until then.
Kyle was craving bbq all week, so we tried out a new place called B's Cracklin Barbeque after work that Friday. It was pretty good, but I realized that I'm not much of a bbq person because it's just too much meat and grease for me. Afterwards, we went to watch Ant-Man and the Wasp at Studio Movie Grill, which is a nicer movie theater that offers meals and drinks during the movie.
That Sunday, David came up to visit. We had planned on marathoning the entire second season of Seven Deadly Sins since it had just finished, but we only got around to watching the first half. All-in-all, not a bad way to spend Sunday cuddled up watching anime. :)
The next day was Shelle's birthday, so we ordered Chinese takeout to celebrate since she was craving it. That, and because Kyle refused to let her cook on her birthday. They went out to some fancy place to really celebrate her birthday on the weekend, so there was that.
I didn't go because David took that Saturday off so that he could come up and stay for longer that weekend to celebrate our four year anniversary. We started off by getting some Indian food for lunch that Saturday since the four of us were craving Indian food earlier in the week. The next day, David and I went out to Nori Nori, this Japanese sushi buffet place that we've been wanting to go back to since the last time we went with our friends, to celebrate our anniversary. Then, when Shelle and Kyle went out to dinner celebrate her birthday, we ate a frozen pizza that David brought up from home, lol. Basically, that whole week was dedicated to anime, cuddling, and food, which was awesome in my books.
I forgot to mention that I also volunteered at the Atlanta Community Food Bank with a bunch of employees and interns earlier that week. Our company has a volunteer day where we can take the day off to volunteer and still get paid for the day, so some of the interns planned an intern volunteer day at the food bank a few months back, and it finally happened. It was pretty fun.
I learned a lot about how the food bank is for anyone who's having a rough week or month or year, and that it's not just for homeless people. It's for people or families who suddenly couldn't work or couldn't afford to take care of their families due to certain reasons. I also learned that a lot of senior citizens also can't afford food in addition to medicine or transportation or any number of reasons, so the food bank organizes and delivers boxes of food for senior citizens every month to help them get by so that they don't have to choose between food or medicine or electricity.
My part of the job was to pick up the boxes and put them on the weighing stations to make sure they weren't over or under the weight limit, and then stacking the boxes onto the wooden pallets five boxes high, which was almost as tall as I was. Luckily, there was another person there, so we slit up the work so that I would move the boxes onto the weighing stations, and he would stack the boxes since he was taller. My main mistake was wearing a thin, gray shirt that totally showed my sweat, lol. People were asking me if I was okay after 30 minutes because they could see my sweat showing through! But it was fun overall. I wouldn't mind doing it again.
Afterwards, the interns wanted to go eat out somewhere closeby to hangout, so we ended going to Bar Taco. I didn't realize that I've actually been to one before until we got there, lol. I forgot that Harrison took Mikey and me there one time when we went up to for Mikey's Calman visits. But this Bar Taco was at a different location, which is why I didn't recognize it.
Here's the thing, I was doing a lot of manual labor that day. I was tired. But I had gotten a ride from Sophie, so I felt bad for saying no since she wanted to go eat. So I was pretty tired and feeling introverted when we got there. It didn't help that I sat next to Sonali, who I had just met earlier while volunteering that day, who had just started working here a week ago, and who doesn't have a lot of experience eating most non-Indian foods. So when she started demanding to know what I was planning on ordering 5 minutes after I started looking at the menu, I was not in the mood.
I don't like it when people demand me to do something. It instantly puts me on edge and makes me defensive. I realized that she was asking me because she was curious and hadn't had much experience eating Mexican food (and I've realized now that I've known her for a month that she likes having people's opinions on stuff before trying it), but her tone of voice was not helping. Then she asked me again in the same tone of voice, and I was annoyed with her. And then I got annoyed with myself because I had already invited her to lunch with us the next day and because I knew she wasn't being malicious at all. But yeah, my first impression of her wasn't the greatest.
And it didn't really get any better... We basically eat lunch together with her now since we're all on the 12th floor, and I still kind of get annoyed with her because she's kind of demanding. Like I was picking up my phone to look something up at lunch about a topic we were discussing, and she reaches over and taps my hand as a sign that she wants to look at it, too, instead of just picking up her own phone which is right there even closer to her than my hand. And she's spacey at times, so she doesn't pay attention, and we have to repeat stuff to her a lot.
Idk. Honestly, I think I'm an asshole. She's a perfectly nice person...she has a demanding tone of voice, but I think it's partly because of her accent that makes it sound that way. Idk man... Some people just rub you the wrong way, and I think she's one of them for me. Or I just hold a long grudge, lol.
And with that, I'll end the post here, lol.
No comments:
Post a Comment