Jack's English Blog

A food related custom I learned about when I ate with my Memaw for the first time was having a long prayer before you ate. You could not eat anything before everyone sat down, and everyone finished their prayer. I had never been religious and still choose not to be, this was apart of my stepmothers culture, and not my direct family. This was a brand new experience and felt wildly unusual to me. After years of praying with them, I don't believe it, but I look forward to it every meal. This is a culture I became assimilated with and now enjoy, and maybe it could be a part of my culture one day.

 One of the most important dishes in my own culture is the caprese salad. my parents own a restaurant and I have always had an explorative pallet, but I was very strict on eating things I didn't enjoy. One day when I was really little I decided on hating tomatoes, and only being able to eat the sauce or ketchup, etc. My parents made themselves, a caprese salad, and pressured me into trying a bit for myself. I loved it, even though the entire snack sits atop a slice of tomato, and since then I now confidently enjoy tomatoes. this food is irreplaceable to me and my culture for this reason.

 While I was sitting I the backseat I once saw my stepmom driving, and she was using her knees to steer the car, so naturally, I assumed we were being driven by the transformer, bumblebee. Every time we got in the car I would pay attention to see if her hands were driving, or if she had secretly taken a break, and let bumblebee take the wheel. I felt like this was some secret between her and the car, and I never asked her about it, until years later when I had more sense and knew she had been using her knees, and had a laugh.

 Writing about my incident made me a little frustrated because incidents like this happen in real life all the time and it can really hurt someone for a long time, more than physical. People really are miserable, and want to bring others down with them, so people will say the worst thing they can, and target it at you, just to leech the happiness from you. I didn't have any strong emotions, due to the fact I dont let these words, get to me, these controversial, words are made to piss people off, so why should I fall for their rage bait?

Small conversations often have lasting impacts on the way young people think about themselves, we are very impressionable. In 8th grade I was drinking pineapple Fanta, I have always really enjoyed tropical flavors, like mango, pineapple, etc. One of my friends came up to me and told me that I drink so many my teeth had turned yellow. This resonated with me and had me think, I brush every morning and night, but I would sit and look in the mirror wondering why. I would brush for 10 minutes trying to fix the color, just so I felt like I could eat the foods that I really enjoyed. In reality, my teeth were not yellow, I was drinking something with yellow food dye, and I stained my lips yellow too, it was a small comment that made a huge impact on me, and the way I thought about situations like that later.

 On my first day of freshman year, someone said something purposefully cringey, when calling role, while being a shorter guy, and bright clothing I assumed he was odd, and weird, and avoided conversations. later that year I gave talking to him a shot and found out he was really funny. I have remained friends with him to this day. I would've really regretted taking his single story, as his full person.