# I just saw a living stereotype **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 5, 2009, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367 "2009-05-05T00:40:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mariposalabrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mariposalabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mariposalabrown)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/41 "2009-05-05T20:59:35Z")
Ok, I just googled around, and apparently some people DO suck the heads of shrimps, but it isn’t near as common as crawfish. Ugh, the heads of shrimp just makes me queasy! ---
**Author:** ![Jeff\_Lichtman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jeff_lichtman/32/1531_2.png) [@Jeff\_Lichtman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jeff_Lichtman)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/42 "2009-05-05T21:08:27Z")
> [@PoorYorick](#): > > Great story, but these were _shrimp?_ Yes, shrimp. Pascal’s Manale invented New Orleans style BBQ shrimp, which are shrimp in the shell cooked in a butter-and-pepper sauce (not sure why they call it BBQ, since it involves no cooking over a wood or charcoal fire). When you suck the heads of BBQ shrimp, you’re sucking out the butter sauce. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/43 "2009-05-05T21:13:20Z")
> [@gravitycrash](#): > > My mother and father still live in a small redneck town where I grew up. When I come over to visit I can’t help but take a jab or two at the town. I’m not mean about it and my parents usually laugh and nod in agreement about my latest observation. > > The last time I came over I noticed that my father had put two plastic deer on the side lawn. (ok, my parents kind of fit in with the towns overall theme) I just had to comment to my mom about this and said “well, at least dad didn’t put pink flamingos in the front yard”. Mom looks at me and just burst out laughing and points across the road to their new neighbors house. > Sure enough, two pink flamingos right in the front yard. I swear to God. > > Not too long after that, dad removed the plastic deer. That reminds me of the old joke: What do pink flamingos put in their front yards? Plastic Mexicans. ---
**Author:** ![mariposalabrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mariposalabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mariposalabrown)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/44 "2009-05-05T21:16:51Z")
Ok, I just read about those shrimp, and hell yeah, I would suck the heads off them, but like you said, no idea why they call it BBQ shrimp, because in my mind that would have been gross, and pointless, as there wouldn’t be some tasty sauce up in ther eor anything. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/45 "2009-05-05T21:23:49Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Plastic Mexicans. All the first- and second-generation Mexican immigrant families I knew had things like BVM statues, not flamingoes. The plastic pink flamingo stereotype to me would be poor white. ---
**Author:** ![festiva76](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8e8cbc/32.png) [@festiva76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/festiva76)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/46 "2009-05-05T22:03:37Z")
I was in the Dallas airport coming back home from basic training back in 1999. It was about two in the morning, and I saw an honest-to-god decked-out pimp strutting through the terminal. African-American male, 40-ish, wearing a purple velvet coat with white fur at the collar, purple velvet pants, spit-shined boots, and a purple hat with a white feather. To top it all off, he was surrounded by an entourage of several ladies. It was difficult not to stare. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/47 "2009-05-05T22:23:04Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > All the first- and second-generation Mexican immigrant families I knew had things like BVM statues, not flamingoes. The plastic pink flamingo stereotype to me would be poor white. You should have seen some of the yard displays in the trailer park I used to live in. And this was in the middle of a nowhere town in Indiana. But yeah, it’s just a joke anyway. ---
**Author:** ![descamisado](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e480ec/32.png) [@descamisado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/descamisado)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/48 "2009-05-05T22:46:20Z")
> [@Ogre](#): > > Ooooooh. No, definitely wasn’t aware of that one. the Bad Asian Driver stereotype used to be operative in New Jersey too (don’t know if it still is). Although I never did before that I recall, I recently notice I’m starting to lisp As a neutral-mannered gay man, am I crazy to wish that it only turns out to simply be something neurological? ---
**Author:** ![salinqmind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3ec8ea/32.png) [@salinqmind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/salinqmind)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2009, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/49 "2009-05-05T23:11:54Z")
During a hot spell last month I went to K-Mart to buy a fan. The K-Mart is just down the road from the trailer park. I stood in line behind a skinny guy covered with home-made tattoos, wearing a wifebeater, John Deere cap, and sporting a luxuriant mullet. He was with his wife - weighed twice as much as he did,wearing one of those tank tops with the built in bra ( stretched to the breaking point), tattoes to match his, and inch long fake nails. They were buying cheese doodles, orange Hi-C drink , motor oil, a bale of disposable diapers, and a fake leather jacket marked down to $15. Oh, and her purse was open, displaying a cell phone in a pink bejeweled case, next to a pack of Kools. They seemed like nice people (they weren’t swearing or talking loudly). Just saying, they looked like a pair of actors told to pretend they lived in a trailer park and were out shopping. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/50 "2009-05-06T00:55:27Z")
> [@5-4-Fighting](#): > > the Bad Asian Driver stereotype used to be operative in New Jersey too (don’t know if it still is). > > Although I never did before that I recall, I recently notice I’m starting to lisp > > As a neutral-mannered gay man, am I crazy to wish that it only turns out to simply be something neurological? I just learned that\* I\* lisp! I had to record the statement, “Hot Topics, January 24” and when I played it back, I realized I was suffering succotash all over that damn phrase! Turns out, I lisp, and _never knew it_. How can that be? I do have buckteeth, so I know how it can be that I lisp, but how is it that I _never knew it?_ ETA: A few weeks ago, the cafeteria where I work served both watermelon and chicken, and sisters and brothers were _all over it!_ White folks damn near had to divert their eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Add99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/977dab/32.png) [@Add99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Add99)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/51 "2009-05-06T01:20:06Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/8pyW6w5B7Aw/hqdefault.jpg "Popeyes Runs Out of Chicken in Rochester, NY") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw) ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/52 "2009-05-06T01:43:51Z")
> [@Add99](#): > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw) How you came up with that perfect stereotype in my own hometown, instantly after I posted the chicken stereotype…I am just impressed. ---
**Author:** ![BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/53 "2009-05-06T03:57:34Z")
> [@Add99](#): > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw) Was it just me, or did the two newscasters at the end have very different head sizes? I couldn’t tell if it was one with a really big head or one with a really small one? Perhaps both? ---
**Author:** ![Ogre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecb155/32.png) [@Ogre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ogre)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/54 "2009-05-06T04:22:38Z")
> [@BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed](#): > > Was it just me, or did the two newscasters at the end have very different head sizes? I couldn’t tell if it was one with a really big head or one with a really small one? Perhaps both? The redhead looks gigantic. :love: ---
**Author:** ![BaneSidhe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/c5a1d2/32.png) [@BaneSidhe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaneSidhe)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/55 "2009-05-06T05:30:53Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > About 10 years ago, in the middle of the mountains of West Virginia, I saw a rusty pickup truck with extended-height rails made out of wood strips, driven by a guy with a long forked beard and beady eyes. I don’t remember if there were chickens in coops in the bed. :smack: I saw something similar to that a couple weeks back when I stopped by the local feed store to pick up horse feed. No chickens in coops, but there were coops, plus a couple of big, steel “coon hound” crates welded into the pickup truck bed. I think in a crash, the dogs and crates would surivive much better than the driver and passenger[s]!! ---
**Author:** ![Cyberhwk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7993a0/32.png) [@Cyberhwk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cyberhwk)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 6:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/56 "2009-05-06T06:21:39Z")
I was real good friends with a black guy at work. We were talking about stereotypes and he says… \*\*Him: \*\* “I actually fit the stereotypes.” **Me:** “I noticed you order the fried chicken quite a bit.” **Him:** “…and I f\*cking LOVE watermelon.” ---
**Author:** ![T.Slothrop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3e96dc/32.png) [@T.Slothrop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/T.Slothrop)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/57 "2009-05-06T07:47:34Z")
There is a shopping cart-pushing homeless lady near where I work. The first time I saw her I thought she was too stereotypical to be real. I figured that some investigative reporter for the local newspaper had disguised herself so she could write an in-depth article about living on the mean streets. Her high heels were an inch longer than her feet so you could see the space in back of her foot for chrissakes. It had to be a costume. I was wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/58 "2009-05-06T08:22:24Z")
Back in 89 I was on a bus from Fort Knox, KY to Fort Rucker Alabama. Some where in Alabama we stopped for gas in a place that was both a gas station and a bar. Out of the half dozen people there in the early afternoon there were probably 8 teeth. There were a few women in there and it says something that after just getting out of Basic Training I could find nothing remotely attractive about them. I expected to hear dueling banjos. Never encountered anything like that the rest of the time I was in Alabama. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/59 "2009-05-06T14:17:11Z")
> [@Cyberhwk](#): > > I was real good friends with a black guy at work. We were talking about stereotypes and he says… > > \*\*Him: \*\* “I actually fit the stereotypes.” > **Me:** “I noticed you order the fried chicken quite a bit.” > **Him:** “…and I f\*cking LOVE watermelon.” Holy cow, that brought back a memory I hadn’t realized I had for many years. When I was growing up in NYC in the late ‘70s, my parents would sometimes drive past this place in Brooklyn under the Manhattan Bridge (near various housing projects clustered around there) and buy watermelons in the summer from some guys selling them out of the back of a truck. This was not a pickup truck: it was a full-on container truck. They drove up from somewhere farther south (my dad asked where the watermelons came from, I don’t remember what state but it was The South) all the way to NYC because they could sell for double the price here than at home, and this location guaranteed they could sell the truck out in relatively quick order. At the same time, from the buyers’ perspective, it was cheaper than the supermarket price, and who doesn’t like the bargainy feeling of buying something out of the back of a truck in Brooklyn? Eventually I told a friend of mine about the “awesome deal” we had stumbled across for watermelons, and he thought it was hilariously ghetto. I totally didn’t get what he meant at the time. To add to the stereotyping, we are Chinese, living in Flushing, Queens (now another Chinatown unto itself) and were passing this place by while driving home from visiting the Chinatown in Manhattan to do our Ethnic Shopping. The reason the watermelon came up as a topic of conversation is because my dad haggled with the watermelon guys to get a better price if he bought something like ten whole watermelons at once, so we had a LOT of watermelon in our house. A real Chinese never found even a back-of-the-truck bargain price he didn’t feel he could get better margin on in bulk. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2009, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367/60 "2009-05-06T14:29:56Z")
The other day I saw self-deluded middle-aged white guy, with his blood up. As I was walking past, he was standing on his lawn passionately holding forth to a neighbour: “I’m not fat! I _work_. I’m _strong_. I know that!” Buddy was wearing sandals & shorts, and nothing else. He had an enormous, full-term beer belly and pendulous rolls of fat hanging down a couple inches over the top of his shorts, all the way around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-just-saw-a-living-stereotype/495367.md?page=4)