vagabondshadow's blog: "real talk"

here's something funny i observed a lil while back... well, have u ever seen a person walk into a glass door?  well...

i spend a fair amount of time at my sister's house, and the front door has an external door that's all glass.  i just thought it was really funny.  they had a distant aunt who's never been in the US before who was visiting.  she opens the interior wood door, then goes on to walk out, BAM! i didn't laugh out loud but i thought it was kinda silly to see a grown adult walk into glass and not realize what it was.

well, obviously, people from the old country don't live the lifestyle that we're all used to in the US.  the homes they live in, don't exactly have glass or moving doors even.  a life of luxury.

i sometimes wonder what my life would be like, if my parents never came to the US.  they came with help with the Lutheran Missionaries back during the vietnam war.

the crazy thing, before that war, the world didn't know who Hmong people were.  they had no idea there was another entire nationality of indigenous people living in south east asia.  so obviously, how to communicate???  luckily my dad and uncle had decent educations and they spoke in a third language.  my dad didn't speak english, and the americans didn't speak Hmong, but they communicated via french.

but luckily with french, they were able to understand that we weren't the enemy and that we were also in danger of persecution from the vietnamese.

but Hmong people overall, are a very poor and simplistic people.  they only know how to farm.  and we were a totally illiterate culture up until like 50 years ago.  can u imagine having an entire society that has NO written language?

so with no recorded history, we don't really know where we came from.  there's history that's passed down through word of mouth, and quilts that women make which depict events and stories.  but that's a quilt which isn't some kind of document that explains explicitly when or how things happened.  it's just generalized.

so, if anyone has seen that Clint Eastwood movie, Grand Turino, is has Hmong people in it.  it's a good movie, and i'm happy to see Hmong people getting some exposure to the american culture.  i still go to many places and people have never heard of Hmong people.  especially when i lived in Kansas for almost 2 years.  lol, i got pretty good at telling the story to just about everyone i met.

anyhow, what would my life be like without being here is the US?  i'm sure it'd be something i can't imagine.  i grew up eating taco bell and spaghettio's (with meatballs), i'm a big sci-fi tech nerd, i play volleyball and basketball, i drive like a madman (well, not so much these days).  but i'm the good kind of asian driver, lol.  hey! i hate the FOB drivers too, i know they suck! lol.

but imagine going into a world you're totally unfamiliar with... imagine not knowing what glass doors are and not recognizing the fact that you have to open that door too.  it seems so silly and obvious to us. 

i heard a funny story that my mom told me, when my dad went to his first day of work in the US... he didn't know he had to bring a lunch, and not having any money yet, he couldn't buy his own lunch.  so he went the whole day not having anything to eat until he went home.

well, i suppose it's our duty to learn what we can and pass down that information to the next generation.  there's things in my life that's all jacked up, and i'm going to do my best to inform the next generation on how to not jack it up the same way.

even if it's a simple thing like, Hey! that's a door, you have to open that one too. or, bring a lunch with, it's a full days work.