When Worlds Collide
Look at these children!
Allegedly, my birthday is coming up. I will be 41, which is potentially “the new 30” or so ancient I should already be dead, depending on who you ask. I’ve celebrated birthdays in various ways in my past.
Last year, for my 40th, I took myself to New Orleans for the first time and ate and listened my way through the city over four days that still linger in my memory.
For my 30th, a capital ‘M’ Milestone, I celebrated by making a bunch of my friends dress up in masks out in public at a Brooklyn bar. I sent out my 20s in a fit of ridiculousness, which is really the only way to handle these moments. It wasn’t my first big birthday, of course, and for me it’s hardly my most memorable.
Take, for instance, my 18th.
My legal passage into adulthood. On March 6th, 2001 I could all of a sudden make almost all of the decisions that adults can make, like which credit card I wanted, whether or not I wanted to buy cigarettes, what I wanted my tattoo to be, and who I wanted to be President.
Perhaps the biggest decision I made in my 18th year happened at the very beginning of it when I was picking who to invite to my birthday party. You see, for pretty much all 17 years prior to that I’d been leading a bit of a double life. I had friends at school, close friends even, who’d come over my house sometimes or I over theirs, or who I’d meet to hang out after school or on weekends. And then I had friends that I knew from the Filipino community, from those countless church functions and parties, who were pretty much extended family. I’d grown quite close to the former, bonding over advanced classes and part time jobs and Worms Armageddon, but it was always with the latter that I really felt myself.
It was with my school friends that I had my first LAN party, and played my first game of D&D—clearly we were the coolest kids in our class. We watched movies in each others basements, burned countless hours in coffee shops and over greasy plates at Denny’s—the only all-ages places open after 8pm in the suburbs—and bowled through noxious clouds in pre-smoking-ban bowling alleys. Meanwhile my family friends and I reminisced about Lego and Carmen Sandiego and sneaking a first look at a Playboy magazine in the attic. When we could get together we’d play basketball in driveways and football in the streets. We’d spend late nights playing video games, listening to music, and hoping there was enough rice for everyone at dinner time.
Until my senior year of high school I was mostly content with this situation. It seemed normal to me to step between these two worlds, cycling between my public, American, self and my home, Filipino, self.
When we all started driving, though, the line between my worlds started to blur.
Once we were no longer dependent on our parents for rides my Filipino friends and I (who did not live that close together) were able to see a lot more of each other, and evenings and weekend plans with my friends from school occasionally started involving them as well. At the same time, I started feeling comfortable enough with my non-Filipino friends that the idea of bringing them into a space I’d kept separate for so long started to make sense.
What does this have to do with food? Well, by the time my 18th birthday party rolled around I wasn’t too bothered about all of my friends getting along because they’d mostly all met a few times by then. I’d also gotten over the anxiousness of having folks navigate hallways and rooms full of aunties-that-weren’t-really-aunties and cousin-that-weren’t-really-cousins. But I was slightly worried that my school friends might end the night on empty stomachs, poking at plates full of food that everyone in the house was happily inhaling. Up to this point the most “ethnic” food I’d shared with these folks was the American Chinese food that I admit I still have a real soft spot for. I didn’t know how they’d react to rice noodles and things simmered in soy sauce, and foods steeped in sour, and bitter.
Looking back, I don’t really remember what they ended up thinking about the food, but I do remember having too much fun at the time to worry about it. After all, there were video games, and ping pong, and birthday cake, and friends, and who isn’t going to have a good time with all of that around? My worlds didn’t end up crashing harshly into each other, but rather blended together easily because, in the end, they weren’t all that different to start with. Maybe they came from different places and maybe they were spiced a little differently, but their similarities were always greater than their differences.
When I was 18 I never ended up picking a credit card, or buying cigarettes, or getting a tattoo, or voting for President. It turns out that the decision I made at the very beginning of that year of my life, to bring together two parts of me that I thought were so dissimilar, ended up being one of the most fruitful, long lasting, and easiest I’d make.