Thursday, November 13, 2008

miscellaneous princess

a friend of mine has taken to calling me "miscellaneous princess" because of my ability to pass for a multitude of ethnicities. many people think i'm hawaiian because that's where i hail from, i get all sorts of different hispanic queries, was once asked by an indian lady if i was indian, and someone once thought my brother and i were asian (i don't get that one). surprisingly, several people have also thought i was a whitey. this is just a preface to a question i'll ask after the following story.

i stopped by my local rite aid tonight. i don't normally go there, usually i hit up the walgreens...it's further from my apartment, but it's on the way home from the subway, so i usually just stop in there when i need supplies. tonight, however, i had passed it when i realized i needed something, and it was raining and shitty, and the rite aid was just a block away, so i made one of my rare visits in. i was at the counter, my cashier was a young lady in her 20's, who had this awesome accent i wish i could describe accurately or at least could do a good impression of. She had the low register of one of those chain smoking gamblers at the slot machines, and some indescribable accent on top of that...part thug, part some ethnicity, part something else....aaand i'm pretty sure she was hitting on me. she kept giving me elevator eyes and telling me if the thing i was purchasing didn't work out to bring it back to her with the receipt and she'll give me a better one. as she gave me my change she was all 'you're so cute' and i responded as i do when anyone is hitting on me --- nervous laughter. she then said 'what are you, arabic? no...not arabic' i told her mexican and she goes (i REALLY wish i had an audio file of her saying this) "ooohhh, you a messican?! really? (elevator eyes)." she then said 'bella bella!!' i turned to her coworker, nervously laughed some more, and then made a quick exit.

the point of this story is to pose this question: should i start standardly answering "miscellaneous princess" whenever my ethnicity is questioned?

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