Conversation Partner #3

On March 26th, Vena and her sister met me at McAlister's for dinner. While our first two meetings were more serious, allowing us to get to know each other on a deeper personal level, this meeting was full of joy. Because all of the my anxiety had been resolved in our last meeting, I came into this one simply excited to spend more time with them. We waited in line to order our food. I feel very protective of Vena and her sister in public, because I see how people look at them. In such a homogenous culture such as Texas, anyone who looks or speaks differently than the "southern norm" is put under a microscope. Growing up in California, with a graduating class that was 75% Chinese, I have a deep appreciation and tolerance for immigrants limits. I do not feel that a lot of people share this respect. People will give them impatient looks when they cannot understand what they are saying or roll their eyes when they cannot understand what is said back to them.

When Vena made it up to the counter, she rocked it. She stumbled a little bit on her words and got a little bit confused, but kept her composure and was able to communicate effectively with someone who had little tolerance to her limitations. Immediately when we sat down, I commented to her on how much improvement I saw in her speaking ability. Being a humble person, she incessantly denied my compliments, giving herself no credit. Both her and her sister fixated on the fact that in class they were learning things like "how are you" and in real life people will say things such as "what's up". Their inability to understand this slang was extremely distressing for them. What seemed like a point of weakness for them led into one of the most entertaining conversations that I have ever had in my life.

I took it upon myself to teach Vena and her sister slang words. We started with the basics like "sup" and "nothing much". Later we moved on to some throwbacks such as "yolo", "homie", "down", and "rad". To get them really culturally up-to-date, I taught them the words "turnt" and "ratchet". This conversation resulted in endless laughter on the incongruity of these slang words that we view as so common in our slang vernacular. To say that I left that dinner with a smile on my face was an understatement. Vena sent me the sweetest text message after telling me how much she appreciated me taking time out of my schedule to meet with her. She sweetly signed off yolo.