mark of the FOB
It’s been a while, I know. I’m not lazy… I just realize that the focus of this blog has deterred somewhat. That’s alright, I don’t mind writing about me, I just think it might be a tad boring. I swear, I’m going to get contributors. You just wait.
Until then, more about me. I just went to Chicago to visit my oldest friend George. He and I met in high school, it’s strange knowing someone who knew you when your breasts were smaller, well…besides family. He’s my brother of sorts, and he’s Romanian. He rarely eats Romanian food though, because of the strangeness of it, and the fact that he’s quite picky, but not in the typical way.
When he was in LA once visiting his family, I went to pick him up from his Aunt and Grandmother’s house. When I rang his mobile phone waiting outside, he asked me to come in.
“Do you mind coming in?”
“Um, sure… I guess I can. Why, are you not ready?” George is always ready to go.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that my grandmother wants to see you. Well, she wants to see what you look like.”
“Yeah, no problem. I’ll find a spot in the next block.”
I just somehow understood, maybe all foreign grandmothers had a code they had to abide, but I could totally imagine my own grandmother saying the same thing about George.
When I finally found a parking spot, I came in to meet George’s famous grandmother. He had been raised by her, much like my brother Ash had been raised by my grandmother, so I kinda understood the connection.
The apartment was familiar, totally different culture, yet somehow still reminiscent of mine. When I sat down, they offered me some apple filo pastry, home made. The taste was even familiar, not the overly sugary pastries most American families would like, but simple and yummy.
I sat down on the couch next to his grandmother. George’s aunt was in the corner smiling at me smoking a cigarette. George loved this aunt, she was quite funny from what he told me. I felt eyes all over me, and well, I think they wanted what my mom wanted, George and I to get married. But that couldn’t happen, I’d been like a sister to him more than a regular girl. As my eyes wandered, I noticed they were watching some sort of rap video on MTV.
“George, your grandmother likes rap?”
“No, they sorta wanted to make you feel comfortable and figured this is what you’d like.”
“Well, tell them to change it. Let them watch what they want. Though, this entire scene is pretty damn funny.”
George spoke to his grandmother in Romanian. I love to hear him speak it, he sounds so kind and sweet when he does. I wonder if his Romanian is anything like my Farsi, juvenile and underdeveloped. Like it’s locked in the last days we were in our home country. Though he was ten or eleven when he moved, I was only six.
The channel changed and soon I was watching some sort of Russian entertainment show, with a number of people dancing about on stage with costumes on and really colorful spotlights highlighting areas on the stage.
“I didn’t know Romanians could understand Russian, I thought they had two different roots.”
“They can’t, we have no clue what they’re saying.”
“Wait, this is Romanian?”
“No , it’s Russian. You were right.”
“Why is your grandmother watching it then?”
“Well, she sorta gets bored with the regular American programming. She much prefers this type of variety program with singing and dancing about. And since she doesn’t understand English either, this is better for her.”
Duh, that totally makes sense. I catch my grandmother watching Spanish television all the time. We’re so different, yet alike.
Another thing George and I have in common is our scar from getting small pox vaccinations as children. We both have on on our shoulders, where there leaves a tiny circular like white impresssion on the skin. I remember an ex-girlfriend of his remarking mine years ago. She said she knew I was born outside of the states for having one. She called it the mark of the FOB.
Pictured above at the large metallic jelly bean at Millennium Park in Chicago:
