Remember Demi Moore in the movie G.I. Jane? Wuss. Remember Jennifer Garner in Alias? Total pan-sy. Remember Hillary Swank in Million Dollar Baby? Lazy. I now have a new idol for bad-assness who is not a fictional character. She’s a teacher, a boxer, and about a dozen other things…and she does them all in a single day. You know who I’m talking about? Frequent Sepia Mutiny commenter Coach Diesel. She’s also a blogger. This morning before work I read her entry about her stint as a foster kid with an Indian family. Here is an excerpt (but if you don’t read the whole thing then you’re gonna’ miss the point):
The first thing I thought about the Patels was how weird their house smelled. It was a strange smell but I liked it too. I thought it might be the incense they burned, like at church. My own house smelled like dogshit because the dog was old, had issues and, of course, we had to walk the dog. I had known Indian people and gone to school with them. I’d had Punjabi friends, but these people were different than anyone I had met in my life before. Their house was super clean. You had to take your shoes off before going inside from the hallway. The people liked to explain things to me, which noone ever had done before.”We put our shoes here because…”The parents spent a lot of time writing.They were vegetarians. They had a lot of rules and Mr. Patel would take forever to explain, in great detail, what each rule was for and why it was in existence. I felt he talked an awful lot.
“Number one, You must wash your own dishes to respect the work that the chef has put into the meal. Water is expensive, so please wash like this…” Oh gawd, not this shit again…I look around and Mrs. Patel is standing behind me with her arms crossed over her chest, watching me, not smiling. She is a tiny woman, thin and about my height. She has a gold earring through her nostril, wears a ballcap with a Mets insignia on it and has a pencil behind her ear. I think to myself, my grandmothers would hate you, you Mets loving bitch. [Link]
Despite being a blogger I don’t actually read a lot of blogs (gasp…my secret revealed). I only read like five, and Coach’s is the newest one. Anybody that can make me feel lazy has got to be spouting some wisdom up in their space that is worth reading. Her back-story has also has me thinking about adoption and foster homes in the South Asian American community. You always hear about white couples going to India to find a child but you seldom hear of South Asian families adopting or taking in children of other races. Anybody have any stories they want to share? I for one am grateful to the “Patels” because if it wasn’t for them perhaps Coach wouldn’t have been interested enough in South Asian culture to visit this blog.
I’m going to stop here because she’s probably already embarrassed that I wrote even this much about her. Sorry Coach. Ohhh, except one more thing. I bow.
