Please speak slowly

Originally published on Tumblr.

I recently moved to the US after 12 years overseas. I’ve lived most of my life in other countries. I’m an immigrant, even though I’m a US citizen, and I look and sound American. I’m a local on the outside and a foreigner on the inside, a bit like an iPhone: designed in the US, but built and assembled elsewhere.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the iPhone analogy stopped there, but it doesn’t. A lot of the time I don’t understand what people are talking about, which may be one of the reasons I always come to Siri’s defense when people criticize it. I’m in the same boat.

Sometimes I can’t parse the things I hear. Sometimes it’s accent, sometimes it’s words, and sometimes it’s sentence structure. I’ll get better at that. Sometimes though, I don’t have enough context to understand what people say. This is an unsurmountable problem when you look and sound like me, because people don’t try to help.

Here’s a good example.

Last week I took my first improv class. Two of us were put on stage and told to discuss something we feel very passionate about.

Deep breath.

It’s my very first time on stage. I’m nervous. My partner’s nervous. And we don’t know each other. I’m ready to talk about immigration, race, politics. Anything important.

And the first thing my partner says is: “I hate the fact that they’re still selling Cieramist!”

I stare at him blankly. Panic. All my neurons fire at once. Out of that chaos, one questions emerges: “What could that be?“

It must be serious. Context. We’re in Texas. I get it! We’re talking about gun control. Cieramist must be a type of gun, or a type of bullet. But I’m not sure.

To avoid sounding ignorant, I do what you’re not supposed to do in improv, and respond with a question: “Why’s that?”

My partner’s answer completely floors me: “Because Sprite is so much better!”

Brand new panic. I know what Sprite is. It’s a soda. But Cieramist can’t be a soda. Surely I’ve heard of all the sodas out there. But what else could it be?

[Note that I later discovered that I hadn’t even gotten the name right. It’s Sierra Mist, not Cieramist, the way my partner pronounced it. Sierra Mist sounds a lot more like a soft drink than a bullet.]

At this point I’m trapped, and realize I to have to followup with another question. I’m glad we aren’t being graded.

“Is that a drink?”

Now it’s my partner’s turn to look completely bewildered. He can’t believe I’m serious, and tries to figure out what I’m doing.

Silence.

He finally decides to pretend to believe that I’ve never heard of Sierra Mist, and we move on from there.

The audience thinks the whole dialogue is hilarious, because of course they’re convinced I’m inventing my ignorance. In fact, at the end the scene our teacher says: “I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you that one of the rules of this exercise is that you have to be honest.”

A room full of Siris, talking right past each other.

Now, if my name were Krishna, or I spoke with British accent, things would have gone very differently. Probably my partner would have thought better of expressing an opinion about an obscure American soda. Probably he would have said something more universally understandable like: “I hate the fact that they’re still selling Remingtons!”

But then, the scene wouldn’t have been as funny. Unless I’d agreed that typewriters were terribly old fashioned.