无知是幸福

Story Sent in by Doug:

Ella and I were on a walk through a city park on our first date when a family of tourists asked us to take their photo. Ella took the camera and I asked them from where they were visiting.

"Tokyo," they said, "We're visiting family."

Ella took their photo and handed them back the camera. They looked at it then said, "Would you mind taking it again? It looks too bright. It was probably the camera's fault."

Ella groaned noticeably loud. I took the camera this time, said, "Sure," and took their photo again. This time, it came out just fine, they apologized for the trouble, thanked us a few more times, and then went on their merry way.

"I hate that," Ella said to me once they were out of earshot.

I said, "What's wrong? It wasn't any trouble."

"They interrupted the flow of my day," she said, "Those stupid Chinese tourists."

"They said they were from Tokyo," I reminded her, but she wasn't listening.

She laughed and launched into an impersonation of them: "Chang ching chango chang! Take picture! Chang ching ching chung! Take picture again!"

I didn't say anything, but I let her have her ignorant, racist fun. After a minute, I asked her if she wanted to go to lunch.

"Sure!" she said, "Let's go to a Chinese place and ask them to bring out the food, then ask them to bring it out again! Ching chang chung ching!"

"Are you really that upset about the photo? They said it was the camera's fault. The amount of time you're taking to be upset about it is longer than the amount of time the whole picture-taking process took."

"Chang ching ching ching! Chang chang? Chingo chango chungo ching!"

"Uh, let's not do Chinese food."

"Chang cheng!"

I didn't say much else to her on the way to lunch (we ended up at a pizza place). Whatever it was that was bugging her about those tourists must have really bugged her quite a bit. At lunch, she responded as herself some of the time, but took any opportunity to spout her stupid impersonation whenever she could.

"Good pizza! Like pizza in China but needs more General Tso chicken! Chang ching!"

"Italians better than Americans! They always take picture right, first time! Chengo cheng!"

I'm not Chinese or Japanese, but it didn't take at all long for me to find her offensive and to decide to not ask her out again.