Uh, you're not THAT exotic
Jun. 21st, 2005 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarahmichiganOne of our computer techies at work was born in India. She's a cute little thing who is a new-ish mother with a baby who's about 9 months old. I was making chit-chat in the break room, asking if her bracelet has a special meaning or if she just thought it was pretty. I asked because my mother had a charm bracelet and added a charm each time she had a child.
The techie, J., went off on this rant (OK, maybe "rant" is too strong a word) about how people always assume that something she does is some special Indian or Hindu tradition. Her baby has one ear pierced.
"People ask me, 'Is that part of your custom to have only one ear pierced?' And I tell them no," she said. "The earring fell out of one ear when she was napping, and the hole healed over before we noticed." She just hasn't gotten around to re-piercing it.
Anybody who knows me well should know that while I am interested in other cultures, I'm not ignorant or nosy enough to ask that sort of question. That other people do ask those kinds of questions shouldn't surprise me, I guess, but it did a little. I mean, especially in this area, there are a lot of people with Indian heritage. It's not THAT exotic. It's not like she's an Eskimo or practitioner of Santeria or something. . .
The techie, J., went off on this rant (OK, maybe "rant" is too strong a word) about how people always assume that something she does is some special Indian or Hindu tradition. Her baby has one ear pierced.
"People ask me, 'Is that part of your custom to have only one ear pierced?' And I tell them no," she said. "The earring fell out of one ear when she was napping, and the hole healed over before we noticed." She just hasn't gotten around to re-piercing it.
Anybody who knows me well should know that while I am interested in other cultures, I'm not ignorant or nosy enough to ask that sort of question. That other people do ask those kinds of questions shouldn't surprise me, I guess, but it did a little. I mean, especially in this area, there are a lot of people with Indian heritage. It's not THAT exotic. It's not like she's an Eskimo or practitioner of Santeria or something. . .
