What the title of this post means, at least according to Google translate is “it happened again.”
What happened again, one might be inquiring?
Oh nothing much, just being mistaken for a Hispanic. Again.
When it first happened to me in my own neighborhood, I figured it was mostly on account of naïve and sheltered black kids not being educated in the double standard of flinging stones while telling others stones can’t be flung at them, or they were just dumb kids. Perhaps both.
However, given the general intelligence, or lack thereof, of the people that live in my own neighborhood, it wasn’t really that big of a surprise that there are kids dumb as bricks that have apparently never seen an Asian person in their entire lives. Seriously, when I finally told them that I wasn’t Hispanic, their second guess was French, and their third guess was Italian.
Regardless of the ironic humor behind the whole embarrassing escapade, I actually didn’t really expect that this would happen to me again, unless I happened to stumble across a society of people that have apparently never seen a Hispanic person, much less an Asian person.
Silly of me to make such a naïve assumption!
This most recent time, it was a little white girl, for whatever reason, standing behind the counter at a Rite Aid with the cashier. She then proceeds to greet my girlfriend (I know, right?) and her father with “Hi,” and then looks at me, and without any hesitation says “Hola.” Reflexively, my lips pursed, and I forced a smile and said “Hello” in return.
Next time this happens, I’m just going to run with it. I took two years of Spanish in high school, I’m just going to respond with asking what their name is and where the bathroom is. Because frankly, it would be silly of me to assume that this wouldn’t happen again, but next time, I’ll hopefully be ready for it.
