Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Big Fat in Little Chinatown

I moved to Manhattan's Chinatown about three weeks ago, and I have been noticing that I have been getting stared at pretty intensely. Now, my friends are always quick to point out that I always think everyone is staring at me because I'm paranoid (and fat), and while that is true, I have to say that what has been happening in Chinatown is far too intense to be just my imagination.

Of course I think I'm being stared at because I'm a big white fatty, and they are all these tiny little petite (even the men) Chinese people, and they all look at me and wonder how I got this fat and how I manage to sit in the Lotus position (which is my preferred sitting style). Of course they may be staring at me and shooting me hateful looks because I commonly sit in front of one of their funeral parlors and chain smoke cigarettes. Who knows?

But the pinnacle of how much the Chinese people in my neighborhood hate me an my fatness happened this morning as I was leaving for work. I wore these random shoes today which I am not used to walking in, so as I walked out of my apartment door I tripped a little, like an inch, and landed on my feet. As that was happening, a little old Chinese woman was walking by, and looked up just as I was tripping, and she thought I was going o fall on her and apparently squish here to death. She jumped and yelled and held her heart in fear, and then when she realized she wasn't going to meet her maker due to my fat ass squishing her, she went an leaned against a wall, and actually told me, "You are soooo big. I thought you kill me if you fall".

How sad is my life ... My neighbors stare me down because they think I may fall and kill them. I guess they're just trying to make sure they make it by me alive.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Word is that if you kill a Chinaman, they turn into a fortune cookie... no joke!!!

Anonymous said...

you can fall over me at any time ;)

mainja said...

hehehe. i've had stuff like that happen. france, people stare at me there. not so much with the fat women in france.

but they're called 'les rondelles' which just sounds lovely.

but yeah, kids stare and point at me there.

GoBetty said...

Ya, she was startled and the truth of her feelings leapt inadvertantly from her mouth.

I used to volunteer at a women's shelter. It was soooo depressing. I used to organize soccer games with the kids who were there with their moms. One day I'm kicking around with the kids and trying to get a game organized and this one little boy joins us and then out of the blue just says "you're fat" to me. I just ignored him and so did all the other kids.

Another time I was riding my bike on the bike path near Lake Ontario in the Beaches of Toronto and some little boy, way off on the stoop of his house, yells at me, "YOU'RE FAT". His mom was there and shushed him

Kids used to go out of their way to tell me that I'm fat.

Children, and the Chinese, blurt out the truth I guess. PEACE