Floyd and I shared a canoe again this year. To keep things fresh, I decided to wear the hat I bought Friday from Lawrence's best costume shop, Fun and Games, and count the number of racial epithets it provoked. I didn't bring my digital camera, so you'll have to imagine what I would have looked like. Here's a hint - I looked a lot like this woman:
...except I was more pale, sitting in the front of a canoe, wearing $10 orange Gap swimtrunks and an American-flag-adorned, God-Bless-America-sloganed white T-shirt.
As we launched into the Elk River at 10:30 a.m., we immediately heard the first inappropriate comment. Before our 5 hour ride was through, our canoe alone heard 31 slurs. Nonsensical Asian chatter (i.e. "Ching chang chong") was the most popular phrase, followed closely by the riff from "Kung Fu Fighting" (e.g. "ba na na na nah nah nah nah nah"). Many chose it simply inquire about an Asian dish I might serve them (including rice, fried rice, and cashew chicken). A minority attempted to use an actual Asian phrase (e.g. "Diddy mao!") or reference (e.g. the Ho Chi Min Trail).
I received plenty of compliments, too, from, "Nice hat" to, "Where did you get that hat?" to "Raiden wins!"One kind youth was so enamored with my headwear that she offered to show her breasts in exchange for the hat. I declined. "This hat will last forever - your boobs are fleeting," I said.
Two other moments from the trip will stand out in my mind. One was hearing Matt shout, "Hambone! Hambone!" just before he and Grant's canoe tipped over. The other was playing Catch Phrase while sitting around the campfire, being pelted with mulberries from the tree above us. My two favorite clues were:
"This began its life as a cucumber, and was soaked in brine." (Dill pickle)
--Shawn, sober
"If I'm like, 'fuck you guys...you want me to...did...something, but I'm not going to...did it like that.'" (Do it my way)
--Nathan, drunk
1 comment:
My favorite was still the one you didn't see or hear: the obese, visibly drunken hillbilly that could only mutter the first thing that entered his alcohol-soaked brain - "You're...a chinaman..."
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