Since the latest episode of “Ted Lasso” I’ve been thinking about embarrassment. It brought to mind an early memory of being embarrassed, tied to my identity as a Filipino American.
It was at a school potluck at my elementary school in Northern California. I was one of the few Asians in the school, and the only Filipino.
I didn’t know what to bring to a potluck since I had never been to one. So I asked my mom to make my favorite dish, chicken adobo, the national dish of the Philippines. She made a pan-ful of delicious, garlicky, vinegar-y chicken drumsticks, put them in a Tupperware and sent me off.
Upon arrival I saw a long table filled with macaroni salad, lasagna, chocolate chip cookies, chips, fried chicken, you get the picture… At the end, I added mom’s chicken adobo.
I watched as folks piled their plates with lasagna, fried chicken, cookies… and went right past the chicken adobo. I saw a lady tentatively push around the drumsticks, but decided not to take one. It sat there for a couple of hours — sad and brown and alone.
Finally it was time to go home. I felt so embarrassed… embarrassed to be a person with a long, unpronounceable name, from a country no one had heard of, and who ate weird food. But I didn’t want to embarrass my mom, so I scarfed as many of those drumsticks as I could. (Honestly not a chore. They were delicious.)
If I could speak to kid Riki, I would tell him that he’s from an awesome country with a rich culture and incredible cuisine. And that those white people didn’t know what they were missing when they passed over mom’s chicken adobo for KFC.