Orientalism from a Turk to a Thai Made in the USA

Orientalism from a Turk to a Thai Made in the USA

Hi Alpay!

I couldn't sleep so I had to write to you again....I want to meet him, I want to meet you...I wish I could see their plays and such but I'm sure I should be in them because of my experiences too...

I was a young child that people didn't know what the hell I was, was I Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Polynesian, Native Indian? No one knew...I was Thai they didn't have that concept of Thai and Thai food back in the 80s.

Especially when my parents worked over by 61st and King Drive or 73rd and Jeffery in Chicago, equivalent to Harlem in NY back in the days....working at the Vienna Hot Dog Joint, selling everything from 5 for a dolla not dollar, Chicken Wangs, to Anne's Fried Rice, Super Tacos, Egg Foo Young (a popular Chinese-Immigrant invention to serve oil sprouts and eggs to the poorly educated demographic for $3.

I used to love my shoe string french fries and my phat ass pizza puffs mom would make me.

Man.....those days were awesome till I saw my mom and dad yelling back towards an unruly black guy calling my parents "Chinks, Chink Chonk..." and telling them go to back to China when we were Thai!!

My dad would say back Go Back to Africa, Ooga Oooga! He gave it right back to them. If you can dish it you better be able to take it. Nothing personal. He has a black son, and I have a black brother. So what? I'm not ashamed of this story because it was funny as heck and still is when others hear it. Why is there a problem with saying someone is black you know? It's not African American when you're from the southside! "People gotta be so politically correct these days" as Don Ricals the comedian on Jimmy Kimmel last night, says. My brother's name is Derick but he likes to go by Joshua because he's reborn again and he got a new name to go with it. Anyway...Derick is cool, he's one person I truly look up to and still love to this day like a brother. He can even speak Thai too!

He would warn my parents of the scammers that would try to get food for free. We had times when the customers would pretend to have lost their "pick up" ticket for their order, after we would give it to them despite the lost ticket, they'd have their friend come back with the ticket and say "I'm here to get the food, yet he didn't put the order in, and that order was given out! We finally made it a policy that if you lose your ticket, you're getting no food. I loved passing the food through the bullet-proof glass because it could spin so fast like a mini wheel of fortune, without the money and without the different colors and nope no Pat Sayjack. It was a rotating door thinga majing I wish I could take home...

People would fight inside, throw food...there were great people, like the one who would come in and say Annie, where's my Annie, or the afro puff guy that was stuck in the 70s when it was the 80s. He reminds me of Maxwell the singer, now that I think about it. There was also this lady that would come in drunk with a paper bag around what we knew was a 40 oz bottle of beer. My dad would ask her "How you feel?" And she'd reply "I feel good" and my dad would say "Dada dada dada da..." haha. I loved those times, but of course, I loved my parents and our lives, and I wished for peace at all times but another problem would erupt during the nights. That's when my dad would go out there with a butcher knife, or pretend to call the cops and tell them to come to the store. You can't call him crazy, at least he was a man. I don't know if I know any guys that would have been able to have a restaurant or enough will power to be there in those days.

After we'd close our fast food restaurant at 10pm, we had a ritual of strategically walking out of our restaurant when the ADT system was being set, along with the 3 layers of door security were locked, we'd go back to 31st and Wallace, "ahh home sweet home of Bridgeport."

In Bridgeport, I was 5 blocks away from Mayor Daley's residence. We lived near Comiskey Park and whenever the White Sox would finally score a homerun, I'd hear it then see the firecrackers outside my window and great view. These were the times I almost felt relieved to go home to our 3rd floor apartment. Except the only thing I hated was the flight of stairs between the ground and the 2nd floor where bums would sleep in the dark corner of the ground to basement steps sometimes because of the dim lighting the Jewish Landlord Mark, never fixed. He was a pharmacist too, and owned the building he worked at. He was a smart cookie. He was nice, when I would leave the water on in the bath tube and forget to turn it off, some how it would leak all the way to the drugstore down below at 31st and Wallace. Now the apartment complex is gone and on the Drug Store is left. They've turned it into Healy school's teacher parking lot. I wanted my kids to see where I grew up but oh well. I have other things to worry about.


The stairs were big wooden painted with blue.

I loved watching Linda Carter in Wonder Woman. I wanted to be like her. I was brought back to reality often. I remember spraining my ankle once jumping down the 2nd to ground floor during the day time of a summer month when i was around 9 years old. I thought I was invincible. How I was wrong, I jumped to my dad's used, burgandy, Oldsmobile's passenger side as I being the only child, spoiled as can be was not injured and in pain and couldn't believe he had not seen me hopping on one leg to get to the car.

Anyway in Bridgeport, I loved it, I went to Robert Healy Elementary school. The demographics was 90% Chinese, 9% White, and 1% Other which included me, Indians, Latinos and Blacks. No one even knew what the hell I was. I told them Thai, Thai!!! They'd ask, is that Filipino? I'd say "well almost, because it's not Chinease but no, I'm Thai!" Healy school is still there. Back in the early 1950s it used to be an Irish German neighborhood and now was full of Italians and Chinese people from the Chinatown three blocks away all along Wentworth, Canal, and 18th Streets. I loved going to Chinatown with my parents.

My parents would usually bring me to Chinatown after a long hard day's work. My nocturnal side probably started because my parents would take me there after work at 10 or 11pm when most of the other children were already in bed. We'd go to Tin Yen, I don't know what it means in Chinese but we called in Tin Yen, which nearly translated into Cold Feet when pronounced the Thai way.

We loved the owner even with his hiccups, he loved to go to the horse races and gamble his fortune away. He always had a toothpick in his mouth and would speak at the top of his lungs. He never messed with me. He wore his Hawaiian shirts and knew our favorite dishes, Boo Pat, Stir Fried Crab, damn it was good. He'd get my parents their "Nam Pla Prick" with the Lemons on the side. If you don't know what that is, you should find out soon because ooOOoh it is good.

On the way home from Chinatown which is only a 5 minute car ride, I'd fall asleep whilst my parents were listening to Oldies 104.3 a station. I love the soothing motion of car rides to this day. I only loved to listen to the Oldies station with my parents. I didn't want to be uncool. I had no other siblings to remind me, it's okay to be different. I was not so apt to let my childhood friends Who were 3 Chinese girls, and one White neighbor, Mee Wai, Winnie, Connie, or Nicole know that I liked it. I wanted them to think I only listened to B96. Now I realize how musically inclined I was and wished I had the balls I have now to have not cared what they thought.

On Sundays, I would go to the Thai Temple. Oh how I dreaded it, I wanted to stay home like my white friends and do nothing but watch TV all day, play outside and just shop. But no, I had to learn about Buddhism, which I am so thankful for nowadays, I had to learn Thai which I am so very thankful for now, and I had to learn Thai Dancing.
The parents who would also bring their children to the temple, would call me "kek" because it means Arabian, or light-skinned Indian. I didn't look THAI. I didn't have a flat nose, I had a raised bridge, and my eyes were big. They always loved touching my raised bridge. Jamook Dong Dong... Jamook = nose and Dong = Tall Bridge like a Roman. Anyway I must have been a white Indian that would tan easily because I would get dark, if I played outside. Their children would call me "Pocohantas" thinking that their parents meant American Indian. I didn't fit their knowledge of Thai. But I was more Thai than they'll ever be. To be Thai is to be Free. I was almost like a Happa or a child of two races, being born of one race but open to all races and seeing more than them in my young age. As for Thai dancing practice, I loved the make up because it was so soothing. However, I always dreaded it because it was slow, and strict. I hated remembering the steps, but loved practicing the talent of looking with the corners of my eyes to anticipate the next dance moves. It was so unlike the dancing I love now which involves fast movements of hip hop, breaking, and Latin music. Now I know why I didn't love Thai dancing yet appreciated the classic elegance. I had no patients. I was an only child that wanted things my way and to this day I still do. I wanted to travel and have lots of pets. When I was 6, I was already calling to talk to friends 1 hour away, when I was 10 I had a penpal named Tracey Flores in Phoenix and friends and family Thailand.

When my parents wanted to get out of "Hell" so to say on the Southside of Chicago and move to Heaven to start a Thai restaurant, they moved us. They were looking out for the well-being of themselves and me since I was starting puberty. It was too dangerous to still have me going around those areas of gang bangers, pimps, drug dealers, and who knows what other crimes. Burglary for sure, with one stupid burglar coming in through the roof and being trapped because he couldn't get out of the high ceiling. To this day, I wonder if he tells his friends this story in Jail.

I had to move to DeKalb at 14, I didn't get to learn sex education with my friends at Healy Elementary School. Then when I came to Huntly Middle school in DeKalb, the next semester, they had already learned it. I had to learn about sex all by myself with the help of some friends.

In DeKalb, I became more associated to white folks, their standards compared to my gifted program seemed to be low, but I could identify with the nerds. In high school, I could get along with anyone, I took Calculus by the time I was a senior in 1998 with the same teacher that Cindy Crawford had taken in 1984. By the way she's from here.

After middle school, I wanted to go to Hawaii University just because I figured, my looks would fit in there...and the guys would be hot. Yum, but no I had to stay here and help my parents with their restaurant.

I learned so much from that and met so many great people. If you want to read about the restaurant it's on another page. Food for Inspiration

Other than that, right now I am coming back into my own real skin and finding out who I am and where I want to go in life, and with whom. I write alot here http://www.luckynotes.com/writers/12/ And hope that there is a guy that can be enduring, talented, and loving like my father here Daddy's little girl qualities of a few good men

That's just bit about me, more like a big bite of who I am...

Thanks for listening to my culturism...that's right culturism...I'm a chameleon that's transformed over and over.

This is one reason why I love so many cultures, and want to bridge many gaps...I just love our differences. At this moment I know who I am but I'm still searching for all different sides to me that I can't wait to embrace from other cultures and finally find my identity.

Big Kisses to you and thanks again Alpay, you inspired me to write all this for you and now share it on here with the rest of the world.

I care for the open-minded, not everyone can comprehend this feeling and appreciate that we do have.

Posted: 4:54 a.m. EST June 27, 2007 by Anne Meesriyong