Tuesday, October 25, 2005 | Listicles
What I Could Have Done to that Jerk Who Asked Me “Hey You Know Karate?” Had I Actually Known Karate
- Walked over to him and listed some of the other possible questions that he could have asked using common Asian stereotypes as a template:
“Hey you eat dog?”
“Hey you know math?”
“Hey you make my car?” - Directed obscene gestures toward him while simultaneously yelling a bunch of made-up profanities in a gibberish language that he would have believed to be Chinese or Japanese or something ching-chong-whatta-whatta-bing-bong.
- Written a message on a napkin for him to meet me at a local bar the next night. Furiously trained the next 24 hours for the moment of confrontation, and then let all my work come to satisfying fruition during an inspired karaoke performance of Carl Douglas’s hit “Kung Fu Fighting” followed by a rousing encore of “Eye of the Tiger.”
- Asked him “What is the capital of Thailand?” and, without giving him time to answer, struck him with a chop to the groin. Then deadpanned, “Bangkok.”
- Driven over to his house and then lectured his children on the merits of careers in the law or medical professions. After pretending to field their complaints about such pursuits, replied, “Engineer is O.K. too.”
- Eaten his dog.
James Yeh is 23 years old and, for the most part, unpublished. His contributor's notes are just like anything else done for the first time: brief, a little bit awkward, and then followed by apologies. Sorry. Also, James is a shameless self-promoter of his blog, "Because I Was the only Chinese-American at Clemson University Majoring in English." After a recent move to the West Coast, he is considering re-titling it "Because I Am the Only Chinese-American Born and Raised in South Carolina Currently Living in San Francisco."