The Hick and the Asian

When I was around eleven years old, I attended a summer camp in the woods just south of the Canadian border. It was one of those inauspicious summer camps that you see in movies and tv shows, the type that seem to be slowly fading away as there are less and less reasons to go outside. It was called Reewahyen, named after a Native American tribe that may or may not have inhabited the area. Needless to say, the population demographics were overwhelmingly white, the number of Blacks, Asians and Latinos could be counted on a little less than two hands. My brother and I were each one of those fingers, though we were from the suburbs, and whiteness was a language we were familiar with, if not fluent in.

I was well liked. This had entirely to do with the fact that I was good at basketball, friendly and funny. I didn't even need all three of those qualities to be well-liked, two out of three would have sufficed. I enjoyed my time thoroughly, all the great outdoorsy activities and whatnot, camping, fishing, hiking, shooting, all sorts of all American pastimes, and spent my afternoons, as we had quiet hours, reading books and listening to music.

So, to sum it up a bit, I liked being at camp. The people were agreeable, the food tasted good because we were always so hungry, and there were no girls around to make guys act stupid for stupid reasons. It was simple.

The only particularly disagreeable moment was with this boy Connor. I never got his last name, but I knew one thing about him: he could shoot better than anyone. At the rifle range, scoring was done out of fifty, and he was the only person I knew to ever shoot a forty nine. I wasn't a bad shot myself, shooting around a forty average, but I was in awe of his marksmanship. He was one of those boys from middle America, where they grow up shooting and hunting, so it didn't make me feel bad as he'd been doing it his whole life. His face kind of reminded me of the way Rupert Grint, the actor who played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, looked like if it was stretched out, given a tuff of blonde hair, and stuck on a five foot body. Connor had darting eyes, always looking around, like someone was on him. Because of his shooting ability, he was someone I kept an eye on from time to time, but I never really planned to speak with him as we didn't have friends or activities in common aside from shooting, and to be honest, shooting was just not that important to me. Still, I respected him on the basis of his shot.

We interacted for the first time on the soccer field. It was one of those team building, field day type things, and we were matched up against each other. I was no Messi, but being generally athletic, I could hold my own on the soccer field. Connor was by no measure a great shakes of an athlete. His coordination was weak, and I could sense nervousness in him. I used that to my advantage and stole the ball from him on more than one occasion. It wasn't personal on my end, but after the game, which my team had come out on top, I overheard him talking about me to some of his friends.

"Sneaky Asian fouled me. I bet it's hard for him to see with those ching chong eyes, like little slits," Connor said. There was a minor chorus of half-hearted laughter from his friends and Connor darted his head around and made eye contact with me. I stared level at him. Connor turned back to his friends. "Fucking chinks," he said, louder this time, and made a point of speed walking off.

Overt displays of racism weren't really something I was used to, so at the time, it was a process sifting through my emotions. I felt hurt and betrayed, like why would he make this about me being Asian? Then angry, because I had outplayed him and he couldn't admit it.

I hatched a plan. After dinner, I followed him walking back to our cabins. I sneaked behind him, moving as lithely as possible, until I was about ten feet away. That's when I made contact.

"Connor," I said. He turned around, his darting eyes making his strange dwarfish proportions look stupider.

"What do you want?" He said.

"I'm going to fight you," I said. I struck a fighting pose. I was nervous, but ready to fight him. If he wanted to insult me, I would physically hurt him if I could. His eyes widened.

"Screw off. I'm not fighting you," Connor said, and he began to walk faster. I started jogging after him.

"You're a pussy," I said. Connor turned and looked at me.

"You probably know kung-fu or some shit," he said, and he sprinted away. I watched him run off into the woods, and though part of me wanted to chase him, it felt like a victory.

Now, I look back on this moment with Connor, and think that under different circumstances we could have been friends. He knew I could ball and I knew he could shoot, but we didn't know each other as people, and the only time we ever interacted was as opposition. His racist insult, though ignorant, was more of an expression of frustration than anything, and his inability to correctly diagnose my culture was humorous in hindsight. And truthfully, I have no idea where Connor's from. In my head, he's always represented middle America, and that's just the story I stick with. And I'm sure, somewhere in the hills of West Virginia, Connor's thriving, maybe with his sister/wife, thinking from time to time about the crazy Asian who tried to beat him up. I wish him and his children the best.