U and the Indian Wedding
Chapter 1
U knows it’s my favorite movie, so when he saw Monsoon Wedding on sale at the video store he picked it up for me. It has many wonderful subplots, it's filmed gorgeously, and the soundtrack is amazing. Mainly it’s about the inter-relationships of an extended family in Delhi, India preparing for a wedding in the days before. We’d just finished watching it when U commented, “we should make friends with an Indian couple.” Mind you, I’m all for making friends with folks from everywhere, but I generally stop short of seeking out people of specific ethnicities. I mean, if I made a new friend and found out that they had been more eager to befriend me on account of my being American and not based on my own personal charming ways, I might just take it into my head to get offended about it. But that’s just me.
Now, U has only been living here in the US for a little under 6 years, so periodically he surprises me by saying these sorts of things. I’m still trying to teach him that it’s not nice to walk up to a person who looks to have Asian ancestry and ask, “where are you from?” as the person will most likely say, “here,” and understandably feel a little annoyed at the question. U’s used to living in Mexico, where if you don’t look Mexican, you probably aren’t and it’s perfectly friendly to ask a non-Mexican person where they’re from.
So anyways, it looked like U was going to get his wish when two days later we received a “save the date” magnet/picture from “S and R,” a couple dressed in lovely traditional Indian attire.
A little background. Growing up, my family moved around a lot, and from preschool through third grade I lived in DP, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, home of O’Hare Airport and the very first McDonald’s ever (that had no place to sit and no drive-through) – until they built a brand-new one across the street from it and tore the original down. The M family (2 parents, 2 kids) lived across the street from us. J was one year older than me and my very best friend during that time. After my family moved away, J and I still got together for a few summers at various camps, swam in leech-filled lakes, got mosquito bites, slept in cabins that smelled funny. I hadn’t communicated with anyone in the M family for years. S was J’s younger brother. The Ms are maybe the whitest family in existence, and based on the picture, it seemed that S was to be marrying a girl of Indian ethnicity.
“Let’s go!” said U.
Chapter 1
U knows it’s my favorite movie, so when he saw Monsoon Wedding on sale at the video store he picked it up for me. It has many wonderful subplots, it's filmed gorgeously, and the soundtrack is amazing. Mainly it’s about the inter-relationships of an extended family in Delhi, India preparing for a wedding in the days before. We’d just finished watching it when U commented, “we should make friends with an Indian couple.” Mind you, I’m all for making friends with folks from everywhere, but I generally stop short of seeking out people of specific ethnicities. I mean, if I made a new friend and found out that they had been more eager to befriend me on account of my being American and not based on my own personal charming ways, I might just take it into my head to get offended about it. But that’s just me.
Now, U has only been living here in the US for a little under 6 years, so periodically he surprises me by saying these sorts of things. I’m still trying to teach him that it’s not nice to walk up to a person who looks to have Asian ancestry and ask, “where are you from?” as the person will most likely say, “here,” and understandably feel a little annoyed at the question. U’s used to living in Mexico, where if you don’t look Mexican, you probably aren’t and it’s perfectly friendly to ask a non-Mexican person where they’re from.
So anyways, it looked like U was going to get his wish when two days later we received a “save the date” magnet/picture from “S and R,” a couple dressed in lovely traditional Indian attire.
A little background. Growing up, my family moved around a lot, and from preschool through third grade I lived in DP, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, home of O’Hare Airport and the very first McDonald’s ever (that had no place to sit and no drive-through) – until they built a brand-new one across the street from it and tore the original down. The M family (2 parents, 2 kids) lived across the street from us. J was one year older than me and my very best friend during that time. After my family moved away, J and I still got together for a few summers at various camps, swam in leech-filled lakes, got mosquito bites, slept in cabins that smelled funny. I hadn’t communicated with anyone in the M family for years. S was J’s younger brother. The Ms are maybe the whitest family in existence, and based on the picture, it seemed that S was to be marrying a girl of Indian ethnicity.
“Let’s go!” said U.
posted by la primera at 8:52 AM
2 Comments:
"but I generally stop short of seeking out people of specific ethnicities."
Weren't you specifically looking for someone in San Diego to "teach you Spanish" and just so happen to have found someone to teach you Spanish...for the rest of your life?
hmm. well, I wasn't looking for someone to teach me Spanish, because I already knew Spanish, having studied it for 10 years. I was looking for someone who would speak Spanish with me so I could do it well enough to become certified to teach bilingual, but I didn't care what ethnicity s/he was -- it could have been someone from Spain, or central or south america, or anywhere in Europe or elsewhere in the world where they teach people different languages as children. I would even have been happy to find another gringo willing to speak Spanish with me, but I was hoping for someone with a background different from my own.
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