Times when ethnocentrism got the better of me.

[Tobin S.]

Some time ago, I called customer service for a computer I had just bought. I was having some trouble with it. The call center was located in India. The person I was talking to had a heavy accent and I was having a hard time understanding what she was saying. At one point I said, "Can I speak to someone whose first language is English?" Little did I know at the time that the first language of most people in India is English.

I drive a truck for a living and I run the same route every day. There is this convenience store on the route that I stop in sometimes. The place was bought by an Indian man a little while back. The store didn't seem right to me after that. The place seemed like it was too hot. The soft drinks didn't seem as cold. The food at the deli didn't seem as fresh. I thought the bathroom was dirtier. I developed a poor image of the new owner.

One day I was at the store and a woman in front of me was buying a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette tubes. She was just over a dollar short. She had no more money. The Indian man motioned to her to give him what she had and said that would be alright. Suddenly, everything in the store seemed fine.

[lunatica]

1. When I moved to the US

I grew up mostly in Mexico City and I moved to the US when I was in my mid twenties. The feeling I had at first was that things were too clean, too plastic and that everything looked and felt fake. The way houses are made here seemed very odd and flimsy. The walls are hollow! In Mexico they,re made of solid cement, or brick or stone. There, when you wrap your knuckles on the walls there's no hollow sound and if you punch the walls you'll break your knuckles. Here you'll create a hole that has to be fixed.

Everything seemed like it was from a theater set where it looks real but it's only two dimensional. It's like linoleum floors that only look like tile or wood or whatever. It doesn't sound right nor does it feel right when you walk on them with hard heeled shoes.

It all seems pretty normal now because I've gotten used to it, but always in the back of my mind is the thought that the walls are hollow and the floors are made of fake materials. It makes me feel like I'm always on a movie set and if I look more closely I will see and feel and hear the fakeness.

It's a strange bias, I know.

[sarge43]

2. My moment

London England, hailed a cab. Cabbie and I couldn't understand one another. He was a East Ender, Cockney accent and me with the Upper Midwest nasal congestion. Took us awhile to sort it out.

Love that city and country. "He who tried of London is tried of life." Samuel Johnson.