Thursday, April 20, 2006

Mistaken Identity

Let me first state that I am a WASP. My mother's family comes from Germany and Denmark; my dad's from a mishmash of Great Britain, Switzerland and maybe Germany. I refer to this mix as "Northern European Mutt."

When my family first moved to New Mexico, my classmates gave me a mixed reception. I found out why when one classmate leaned toward my desk and whispered, "Hey, chica, are you Hispanic or what?" I thought he was kidding.

Fast foward a few years to the summer before senior year in college. I'm a waitress at a doomed Thai restaurant, and I meet the dishwashers for the first time. One of them asks, "Como te llamas?" [Note: does anyone know what the foreign language shortcuts are for MS Word?] I tell them that my name is pronounced "Alee-sha." They ask how it's spelled. When they find out (ALYSIA), they start laughing, "Hey! That's a Spanish name! You said you were from Mexico, right?" No, New Mexico, but apparently that's a sign of denial.

For the rest of the summer, the dishwashers spoke to me in Spanish. I could figure out enough to answer their questions so as to not seem rude, but that just goes to prove their point (that I am a closet Latina).

After a few weeks of this, one of the Thai cooks gets in on the action. Except that he believes me, that I'm not from Mexico. But, he says, I do look like I'm from this one country ... over there by Egypt?

Turns out he thought I was Lebanese.

And so it goes. It doesn't help that my name tag at work says "Meesh" (I didn't want people mispronouncing my name, plus there's another Alicia at work already). I get a lot of questions about my name and/or my family's ethnicity. (By the way, "meesh" means "mouse" in Hungarian.) The closest anyone's come to guessing was when a customer stopped me just to ask me if I was Irish. (We don't know exactly ... accounts differ. My money's on Welsh.)

Three days ago, one of our truck drivers automatically started speaking to me in Spanish.

Anyone else have a bizarre ongoing theme in their lives?

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