Third Culture Kid(s)

I realize that this weblog has devolved into All Bullet Points, All the Time, but none of them would make particularly good posts in and of themselves. So, if you’ll kindly bear with me:

• M. has decided that the way to instill a proper sense of Asian heritage in MM is to feed her Spam. Specifically, Spam-musubi. When I observed that Spam-musubi are, in fact, a Hawaiian invention and not “Asian” in any strict sense of the word, he replied, “We’re all a little Hawaiian.” When I replied that he’s not even remotely Hawaiian (except in terms of leisurewear, and then it’s only Hilo Hattie Hawaiian), he answered, “No, it’s like on St. Patrick’s Day, when everyone’s a little Irish.”
• This led to a discussion of the recent comparisons of Koreans to the Irish. M. wasn’t having any of it, though, since he thinks, and I quote (because I could never make this stuff up), “Koreans are the Ferengi of the world.” Asking him to explain this only gets you an hour or so of stories about working in his parents’ liquor store in LA.
• He also uses this as an explanation for why he’s always obsessed with how much money we do(n’t) have in the bank. But, for the record, I’m always the one who tries to make sure we have a few hundred dollars to give to his mom when we visit them in California. Loves the casinos (she’s the one who got me hooked on the penny slots, since a little does go a long way there).
• MM spontaneously identified numbers correctly today. I’m not sure when she picked them up (although just about every book she has, and every show she watches, features numbers in a big way), but we were reading a book with numbers printed on the cover, and she just started pointing to them and naming them - correctly! My eyes nearly fell out of my head.
• Of course, this is the same kid who kept feeding me a wadded up receipt she called “okra” all day long, and who poured me “tea” from a folded sock, so she’s not going to be entering the Little Genius School anytime soon.
• I finally made an appointment with a therapist. We’ll see how it goes, but it’s a step, at least.
• I heard back from my advisor, after I sent her a whinging email late last week. She was very encouraging and made me feel all smart and validated.

And on that note, I’ll wrap up this edition of the bullet points report. Hopefully I can be back with a real post before too long.