"Surprise motherfucker!"

Veiled? Must be nice.Haha

I remembered going to a friend's house and the dad put his hand at my chest and looked at me dead in the eye and asked. "Are you Vietnamese?"

"No sir, I'm Taiwanese".

"Oh ok, you're ok to come in. I did some R&R there and you people are all right"

That situation would have been way worse if I was from Vietnam.

I lived in Bohemia which is next to Patchogue. It's a terrible place to live if you're a minority.

I was bullied from grades 3 halfway thru 12. In grade 9 it began to get physical. In grade 12 it stopped being physical after my bully, a weightlifter and football player, pulled back a basketball and threw it with all his strength at the back of my head in gym. I broke his nose.

I am not particularly proud of it. I am not bragging. Though multiple times throughout the years I wondered how no one noticed. As the years went on I saw other students look away, if they weren't laughing at me. I then began to notice the rare teacher look once and then act like they saw nothing.

To me, what some of these kids do doesn't seem like that much of a stretch. I think this way because of my experiences, amongst other family issues that were also happening. While I am not wholly certain, when I dig deep, it's possible one of the key reasons nothing more happened is because after I snapped it all stopped.

The line is thinner than you realize, I think.

Funny thing is, now that I'm older, I understand that I handled everything well by the perspective of people who believe the wall of "don't hurt others" doesn't have a door in it. Just a ton of trauma and general mistrust for anyone who happens to be male and anyone in authority, and a very deep dislike for injustice and preventable incidents.

I think when you feel entitled and think everyone in school is looking and laughing at you. Ya, it's probably not indiscriminately in this person's eye.