The other day I was at the mall in Chilliwack with my sister and her two kids. We went there for the sole purpose of going to the food court so everyone could have what they wanted. There was a lot of old people there and it had that abandoned echoey silence of a mall that had once been dominated by big headed teenagers with noisy sweaters. After some time, I decided I would eat some of the offerings from Ono Japan. When I went to order my food, a number of people were ahead of me, including two elderly ladies. They were dressed like the 80’s and smelled like tea tree oil. When the clerk at Ono Japan handed the food to one of the elderly ladies, the shorter of the two grandmas leaned in and said to the clerk
“You have the best food in town. Very Chinese!”
The look on the clerks face was at first confused. Her confused look quickly turned to a smile as she realized that this was coming from a dementia ridden old lady who probably thought the whole food court was a giant Chinese buffet and would have said the exact same thing to the 16 year old white kid running the A&W two stalls over. I thought it was funny.
In other news I purchased a chair from a liquidation type outlet and I spent a few hours assembling it. When I sat in it and leaned back, the chair basically broke right in half and I fell to the floor. I laughed it off and my sister laughed at me and pointed and laughed some more.
That japanese lady was crazily racist. Condescending to the white elderly with her fake smile of acceptance!
Ahhhh old people. Somehow their age makes their racism/prejudice/ignorance more tolerable. Maybe because we know they are going to die soon, and will take their views along with them.
Your story reminds me of an experience I had the other day while waiting in a hotel lobby in Boston. A nice old couple from Texas started talking with me and my friend. When they found out we were from Canada, they started telling us about their travels to Canada. They brought up Banff, and then the old lady says “when we first went there it was lovely, all the local people running the shops. But then when we went back a couple years ago, all these Japaneeese people had moved in and were running everything”. Let’s just pretend she didn’t say that! So then somehow the husband brings up the topic of how all the American jobs are being exported. And then the wife chimes in about how all those Japanese people are taking over manufacturing. Man she must really not like Japanese people! And I had no idea that the American manufacturing industry was based in high end electronics and cars. Good thing I did not tell them that I am half Japanese… oops I mean Chinese! I guess it can happen to the best of us.
Maybe the old guy fought in the war in the pacific and still has some amount of hostility toward Japanese people for bombing his harbor. I mean, it was a pretty sweet harbor full of sweet ships and stuff!
Old people sucks, anyway, but somehow I do like few of them. Maybe they are less old that I think they are. The worst thing is that some of them try to be funny.