The Battle of the Paper Bag

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be white.  But not just any white… blonde hair blue eyed white.  Aryan German Hitler white.  Color contacts and bleach were only a step away from making that a reality but my dear mother would never have let me live if she knew I was even contemplating it.  In my defense, growing up in the 80’s guaranteed a desire to be blonde hair and blue eyed because the hipness of diversity or the reality of being politically correct wouldn’t quite make its way into generally accepted mainstream America until much later. 

In the 80’s, all the toy commercials featured white girls and white boys, none of the Barbie dolls I had were Asian and none of the cartoons had any Asians.  Who didn’t want blonde hair like the Sweet Valley Twins?  Even The BabySitters Club only had one token Asian girl, but she of course was Japanese and did I mention, growing up – there weren’t many Japanese kids?  If there were, they were so Americanized, they didn’t even eat sushi, use chopsticks, or speak Japanese, and they didn’t even have to go to Japanese school like us Chinese and Korean kids did.  They were usually third or fourth generation Asians, so far removed from the experiences we were going through – I mean, their parents spoke perfect English for goodness sake.  Some of them even had parents who went to college… in America!  It just didn’t compare to our life as an American born Chinese growing up with immigrant parents. 

But I didn’t want just the blonde hair and blue eyes, I wanted everything that went with it.  Mac’n’cheese, spaghetti, and burgers served for dinner at home instead of rice and various Chinese dishes every single night.  Cool neon clothes and spandex shorts with crimped hair, big bangs, and curly neon hair ties instead of my flat jet black hair and oversized broken English shirts imported from Taiwan (you always go two to three sizes bigger so you can wear the clothes for a longer period of time). 

My mom tried.  But none of it mattered much to her anyway.  In our own little immigrant world, what mattered was how long you practiced the piano everyday, how many extracurricular activities you were committed to and your grades in school.

As a mother of three kids four and under, I am now constantly trying to find ways for my kids to experience their Chinese culture, encouraging them to eat with chopsticks and try authentic Chinese dishes, and while doing so, other moms and strangers are always praising me for introducing such an advantage to my children at a young age.  Maybe it’s the times.  Maybe it’s living in a big city.  Whatever the case, diversity is certainly celebrated in ways unheard of in the 80’s.

Growing up, I not only was mocked and humiliated for my dried pork and rice wrapped in seaweed lunch, I was scarred.  I am still in disbelief when I see how hip and cool bento boxes are among the food bloggers of today.  It certainly wasn’t acceptable when I lived through it. 

I know most people don’t remember things that happened from second grade.  But I’ve never forgotten it and it certainly fuels my ambitions to teach my own children the cultural sensitivities they must embody as they interact with other kids who might be different.     

The blue picnic tables separated with an invisible separation of “kids who brought their lunch” and “kids who bought their lunch,” and for the most part, it was also “Americanized kids” and “immigrant children.”  If you brought your lunch, immediately went into the “packed lunch” line and ate your lunch right away while the “school ticketed” students stood in the right lane, and paid for a typical American lunch with your pre-paid lunch ticket.  The American kids hated bought lunch.  It was so cliché to them.  Breakfast for lunch?  Spaghetti for lunch?  Tater tots?  Mashed potatoes?  Hot dogs?  But for an immigrant child, this was the land of unspoken American food, only experienced at school for our immigrant parents never bought us such things.  The only downside to the ticketed line was how long it took to get your lunch.  While we waited and waited, those with paper bag homemade lunches made their way to the benches immediately and enjoyed their American homemade sack lunches with Capri Suns, Squeeze Its, fruit by the foot, gushers, goldfish, PB&J, or if they were really lucky… lunchables!

Initially, I wanted a cute little brown sack just like the white kids. I wanted so badly to be just like them.  The line for hot served lunch was long and tediously slow (unless your class got their first but mine never seemed to), meanwhile the sack lunch bag went straight to eat and were first to leave for recess. 

I had to beg my mom to buy brown paper bags from the grocery store. 

“But you just throw these away after?” she asked me with skepticism. She couldn’t figure out why my metal lunch boxes complete with thermos cups weren’t good enough, or why we even had to purchase paper bags when those would suffice.  

“Yes, but that way I won’t lose it!” I explained.  I had obviously done my due diligence and was ready to win the paper bag fight. 

“If you use a lunch box, you can just bring it home, I wash it and you can use it again!” she said.

“This is what all the kids are using Mom!” I pleaded.

“Everyone go jumping off a cliff, you join with them too?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not a cliff, it’s just paper bags for lunch, so yes!” I responded. If my memory serves me right, I was a pretty smart second grader.   

I knew this would be a tough battle.  Asians are notorious for their frugal ways.  We always had a bag of plastic bags, ready to be reused, we never left a restaurant without all the superfluous napkins leftover, our house was strewn with unofficial Tupperware that had lived a prior life as spaghetti jars, cool whip containers, etc. and though our home had not been subject to the “leave all the packaging protectors on” rule, I had enough uncles and aunts with saran wrap over their remotes and plastic covers on their tables on top of the tablecloths, that I too knew, this would be a hard sell.

At a young age, my mom had hammered into my head the importance of budgeting and saving.  Do it yourself was not a project for the weekend for us, it was a way of life.  Weekends were filled with trips to numerous garage sales in upscale cities or large flea markets and I knew what Ross was but didn’t quite understand the concept of the mall until my high school years (we just never shopped there until later).  My mom loved to say, “No wine taste with beer salary” which confused me until I was in college age and closer to drinking age.  Committed to our frugal ways, our dishwasher served as a drying rack and I never knew a soft towel (besides at a hotel) since all our stuff was air dried in the warm California sun.  It wasn’t until I was 27 that I would have to learn how to use a dishwasher as a dishwasher for the first time, and college would quickly teach me that dryers shrink sweaters.  We always had a dryer, we just never used it correctly.

            I used to think being cheap was an Asian thing.  The pure joy and excitement my aunts and uncles had along with my own parents about a good deal was never short lived.  It’s almost as if the food tasted better when it was a good bargain.  Or that the supplies worked better when it was discounted.  When the 99 Cent Store chains finally made its debut in a neighboring city, we went ballistic over the stock.  I still remember my cousin stocking up on Dove nose strips from the store, explaining what a steal it was compared to the Save-On drug stores.  My entire family was infectious with cheapness.  It wasn’t until I got older that I realized cheapness knows no boundaries and doesn't discriminate.  Cheapness unites all ages, races, genders, and religions.  

One of the roommates I had in my 20’s was exceptionally frugal, and she was white!  Blond hair, blue eyed, white girl WHITE.  She rarely ate out, she made her own meals three times a day, and she reused red silo cups by running them through the top shelf of the dishwasher.  While I was eating out for lunch and dinner everyday and secretly throwing away all the used red silo cups after hosting a night of friends at our apartment, she was purchasing her first car with ALL cash after a year of working, and still shopping at Ross while I toted my little brown bag from the nearest Bloomingdales with pride.  It was then that I realized… frugality is not limited to my Asian family.  It was then that I also started to celebrate the frugal ways my family had taught me all my life.  I mean if you think about it, it’s actually a smart way to live.  

           

I did win the paper bag argument.  But it wasn’t easy.  And it didn’t last long.  When I buy paper bags now, I chuckle at the memory of how long I had to work to persuade my mom.  These days, everyone is environmentally conscious, and they understand that using a bento box will help the environment by reducing our trash and "carbon footprint."  Back in the day, all my Asian family members were using lunch boxes because paper bags were wasteful.  If we recycled, it was because there were machines that gave us coins in return for our trash!  

"Why to use a paper bag when we have leftover tupperware from the cool whip?  Or the cream cheese?  Or the lunch meat?  Ai-yah, just use it!"  

Like me, you may never look at a paper bag the same again... 

My paper bag story is not done.  Yes, it's a long one... as many of my memories are.  

So.... I probably brought lunch a few times, but I only distinctly remember one time that I was sent with a paper bag, the one I wanted so desperately before....  

I asked my mom to make me a pb&j sandwich, like the cool kids.   

"A what?" she asked.

"A peanut butter and jelly sandwich,"  I repeated.  

"I dunno what that is.  You eat what I make.  You don't complain, or you go hungry."

And that was that.  So, the day came and I took my lunch with gratitude, not knowing what might be in it.  None of it mattered much, because my lunch would reside in a brown paper sack, my ticket to the east side.  I proudly held my brown paper sack, got into the quick line, and sat down with the kids on the east side.  She wrapped it in foil, who does that.  Why couldn't we have normal ziploc bags like everyone else?  I opened it slowly, not sure what I'd find.  Ohhh, I was actually quite happy.  I loved dried pork with rice wrapped in seaweed.  Yum, I thought.  I guess this is better than a sandwich.  The kids around me thought differently.  

Ridicule.  Laughter.  Disgust.  It felt more like intolerant hate, but really, they just didn't get it.  It was cruel.  It was painful.  It was... just what kids do with unfamiliar territory, but still... it sucked.

Is that seaweed?!  Apparently, the kids back in 1988 didn’t have seaweed as an organic snack as the kids today do.  Nor did Costco or Trader Joe’s sell them as a hip snack for white people (no offense white people, but this is how it feels when I see something I was mocked for celebrated and eaten by everyone now.. I'm unsure whether I should be happy or mad, but mostly I lean towards the former).  Well.... unfortunately, back in 1988, my seaweed labeled me as an outsider.  Do you also eat raw fish? Some kids asked me (when I say some kids, I mean white kids).  Well technically, I wouldn’t try raw fish sushi until I was at least sixteen, but the thought that my parents did already embarrassed me, and I met their teases with silence as I struggled to figure out what to do.  I was ashamed of my lunch, still hungry for it, but not sure how I could even take another bite.  Why did I have to be so different.  I didn't cry though, I'm not a crying person.  To this day, I rarely cry.  So I didn't.  But with every fiber and emotion in my body, the awful memory seared itself in my mind.     

This was a moment I had been waiting for and yet here I was… wanting nothing than to be far away from these mean white people who didn’t understand the food I ate at home.  I wanted to be back with the other Asian kids who were excited for tater tots and breakfast for lunch and school lunch pizza.  Not the snobby white kids who laughed at the nasty lunches that paled in comparison to that which they ate at home.  No more paper bags for me.  So I left.  And I never went back. 

I mustered up the courage to ask my mom to buy lunch.  She was not pleased with my fickle indecisiveness.  I didn’t want to tell her someone had made fun of my lunch.  She would have probably personally approached this child’s parents with a word or two, or three, about how inappropriately they had raised their child, and made me bring more sushi to school for lunch.  Instead, I told her I thought it was more affordable to buy lunch because of how much you got, fresh and hot, and that it wouldn’t waste her time and money going to the store to buy paper bags you would just throw away.  She seemed pleased with my logic at the age of seven.  The convenience was priceless and saved me from ever facing the cruelty of the culturally inept children of the 80’s.  How happy I am that bento boxes are in and it’s now cool to be diverse and welcoming of other cultures.  It means my kids will never experience the painfully mortifying experiences I went through.