I am a Small Monkey

When I was a little girl in 4-H we had some sort of singing contest as a group. I don’t remember a lot about it, except that we sang songs from “The Sound of Music” and “Oklahoma.”

I remember that we won something, maybe a ribbon. I remember that my friend’s mom was our leader.

The one thing I can still remember fairly clearly is the car ride home, at least part of it. I was gushing about our win, but wasn’t quite sure what it meant. I asked my parents if we were competing with the rest of the world. I asked if we were competing with China. Then I said, “And they would be like, ‘oy opa toy opa toy opa toy’” because that is how thought Asian people sounded.

I should be horribly ashamed, but I was just a little girl, and not exposed to a lot of Asians. In fact, I didn’t know there was even a difference between Chinese people and any other Asians. To take it one step further, I didn’t even know that one of my best friends WAS Asian. I did not know what Filipino was, nobody told me (even still I spell it wrong without a spell check). Also, “Oy opa toy” is incredibly catchy to sing.

Many, many years later I attempted to teach myself Japanese. In part because I was living a kind of uninspired life, and I wanted to learn something new. And in part because that’s what they spoke in all my favorite anime.

It’s kind of foolish to try and learn something as complex and different as Japanese on your own. But I memorized the Kana and the Kanji and the Romanji, I even started working on sentence structure.

Unfortunately, and as my two wonderfully patient Karate Senseis will tell you, I forgot everything, including how to count, which you would think would be the simplest thing. I remember the basic “Watashi Wa” sentence structure, as well as the words “Chisaii” (small) and “Saru” (Monkey). Don’t ask me why those two things stuck out, because I certainly couldn’t tell you.

Eventually of course, I quit my Japanese learning quest, because I realized I would never learn it properly without an instructor. As a sidenote, I eventually picked up a few more very, very useful words, Nori, Unagi and Sashimi (if that puts me at the same level as those white trash guys who say they know Spanish, and then proceed to name off the taco Bell menu, then I don’t want to be right).

In College, which I went to at the fairly old age of like 24 or 25, I decided that instead of taking something like Spanish as my required language, I would take the Irish Gaelic. I would not let go of this idea that I MUST have a gift for languages.

I was, without a doubt, the worst student in that class. Why I signed up for a second semester I will NEVER know. It was after that when I realized I was kind of stuck with English. But whatever, right? English is a totally popular language all over the world. I can get by.

Then, a year and a half ago I started taking Karate. There are Japanese words and terms and things that I am supposed to know. And while I have managed to get most of them stuck in my brain over the last year and a half, I only half the time know where to apply them, and almost never can produce them on my own with no help.

What’s the point of all this? Well, if I want to get rid of my old coffee stained obi (because really, it’s all about fashion here, oh, and hey look, I got one), I need to know a bunch of those things, where to apply them, and be able to produce them on my own in like three weeks.

I may or may not have a plan, because in the end, I am pretty much the only one who knows what works with my ADHD addled brain.

I will keep you posted. Thanks for listening.

THE END.

P.S. Do you see those awesome gloves I am wearing? My friend April made them for me! FASHION!

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Tags: adhd, asian, japanese, karate, language, race
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