A Run For the Border

Sometimes it's weird being Asian, cause people stereotype me and just assume I'm good at math. And for the record, I am, but I'd like to think it's because I paid attention during class and have applied it for practical use throughout my life, not because of some genetic predisposition. And why are so many people surprised I don't like raw fish? It's not like I'm stranded on an island without fire, or that it tastes like nacho cheese or something. Besides, they weren't there that time in 1980, when my parents left me with some non-Vietnamese nor English speaking family, behind the Taco Bell on 4th Plain for a few hours during lunch, while they went shopping at Montgomery Wards. I remember a cold and soured broth, nothing that resembled the fresh, steaming hot and flavorful "canh chua ca" I was use to eating at home. Nor was it even anything like a Thai Tom Yum, which had merely just been refrigerated. This was gray, murky pond water with dead goldfish. As I looked around at the other kids, I was horrified at what I ladled into my bowl of white rice. I soon began thinking that maybe, I accidentally served myself from the wrong fish bowl, but why would anyone place their aquarium in the middle of the dining table?

Shortly after abandoning my spoon and fleeing the kitchen to take refuge outside, where I was comforted by the familiararity of grass and trees and birds chirping, I discovered a dead racoon beneath the house with one of the other runaways. I suppose this day was when I first learned and exercised the concept of statistics. After the gruesome story I would impart upon my parents of what I experienced: the raw fish and maybe the next course laying underneath the house, the odds of me ever returning to that house again, were highly in my favor of being, never.