I spent seven weeks in Japan 20 yrs ago. I want to go back! It was bizarre: they were very polite. We spoke with hands and smiles and pointing. It worked (because they wanted it to).
I have never been silent for so long, not even under Covid.
The food was great too.
I also spent a longish time in Russia. That was out of water for sure, but not so nice. Interesting, yes, but not so friendly. And the food was sure not so good.
I think I should get out of my depth again more often, now that the OP asks.
Ah, yes, and then there was Glasgow 1993, Friday, Summer. Uff! Weird, that was.
A friend taught at a Catholic elementary and middle school in a smallish town in Wisconsin. I asked her once about whether only Catholics attended and she said no, they just required that you be religious.
I lived in China for over 2 decades, so there are tons. I’m a white guy that speaks fluent Mandarin.
So, back in 1986, when China had barely opened up to individual travellers, and there were only about 200 towns one could travel to with a permit in the entire country the size of the US. I was in a dippy little restaurant in a dippy little town (couple thousand people max) in an impoverished province (Guizhou). I was eating and of course a crowd of dozens if not more surrounded by little table, and my back was to a wall with the little picnic type table in front of me. They were a mix of Han Chinese and local hill tribes. Some old dude asks where I’m from, and I answer the US. He starts going off on “running pig dogs of capitalism” and other Maoist slogans and shit from the 1950’s. It freaked me out to have this crowd around me, and this guy going full mental rascist. Fight or flight kicked in. The first time I have ever felt unsafe in China. I jumped up from my seat, and towered over the entire crowd. The tallest person prolly didn’t reach over my shoulder. Instantly, the fight or flight evaporated, and I smiled and laughed my ass off. The crowd started laughing. Some of the few mandarin speakers told me to “ignore this crazy old coot” and life was good. I was back among friendly people, and none of them had ever seen a white person before much less could communicate with him. It started awkward and ended great.
I’m 14 years old, and it is my first day of high school. According to my timetable, my first class of the day is Grade 9 French, in Room 210. I’m hurrying down the hall, trying not to be late, and I pass Room 212. The next door has to be Room 210, right? I opened the next door, headed in, and took a seat.
I looked around. Um … where were my friends from middle school? And why does everybody look so much older than me?
Turned out that Room 212 had two doors, one at the front of the room, and one at the back. I had entered the back one, erroneously thinking that the next door after 212 had to be 210. Anyway, I ended up in a Grade 12 algebra class, and got some surprised looks from the other students, and the teacher.
Things got sorted out, and the teacher kindly explained that Room 210 was one more door down the hall.
If it happened to be Bryn Mawr (where my daughter went), I’m not surprised. The student body there is very protective of each other and also large-minority lesbian. When I visited I can’t remember ever seeing a male student on campus.
The Catholic schools I’m familiar with don’t even require that – but you still have to sit through prayers and attend Mass. That’s all stated up front.
Once I reflected, I recalled so many incidents I could hardly pick one.
Dancing in a male gay bar in the Castro in the 1980’s – it was like dancing with a race of giants because I’m 5’1. And in my twenties, it was a novel experience being in a bar and being absolutely ignored.
Working in a wholesale nursery in California where all the other employees were from Mexico, no one spoke English, and everyone was three times as competent as I was.
Being invited to my mother-in-law’s regular luncheon party at the country club, in North Carolina. They ate things like creamed shrimp in pastry shells and tomato aspic. I was a California hippie. It was a world I’d never set foot in (and have strenuously avoided since), upper class southern ladies. They told darkie jokes. Seriously.
Northern_Piper, this is an excellent thread; every post has been interesting. Thanks.
I’m a straight male. Years ago, I started a new job. The first friend I made there was D, a lesbian. She began inviting me into her social life, where I was often the only male. Drinking parties, events with her all-female family, lesbian bars, pool parties, even a dress-up, no-men-allowed tea party (my 90+ year old great aunt was invited, and required my physical assistance, so an exception was made for me). I felt a little odd at first, but got over it quickly, as they were very warm and welcoming.
Midway thru the pool party, D took me aside and said they’d normally take their swimsuits off, and hadn’t because I was there. They had decided they were comfortable enough around me to go nude, but D wanted to warn me. I don’t remember what I said, but it must have been the wrong words, because they kept their suits on. I’d like to go back in time and slap me.
I did a senior high school year abroad in the Japanese countryside, through Rotary International. So, I got to be the only white kid (also tall, blonde and geeky) for many miles around, certainly the only Gaijin in the valley. I was introduced all around, attended the local high school, and was treated nicely for the 9 or 10 months I lived there. But I never escaped the feeling of being a curiosity, almost like a mascot, in some situations. It felt awkward when I was expected to “behave like an American” or “do American things” (whatever those were). But it was more awkward when I tried to participate in some Japanese cultural things when I had no clue.
In subsequent years I lived & worked in larger cities (Tokyo, Kyoto) where there were a lot more foreigners and the citizens were more accustomed to foreigners, so the “fish out of water” feeling was greatly reduced.
I’m Hispanic, and a native of south Texas. During my family medicine residency I did a one month rotation in Jasper. Jasper is a small town in east Texas with a reputation of being a hotbed for Klan activity. This would have been back in early 2005. I don’t recall seeing anyone who wasn’t white during my time there. I did my best to keep to myself, only going out to work. That’s my most “fish out of water” situation, even more so than the time I spent a week on vacation in Japan in the fall of 2008.
It was not Bryn Mawr. But it was another college of similar history and demographics and a similar (perhaps enhanced) reputation for both protectiveness and lesbianism.
In hindsight, I don’t think I would have done it. I wanted to take a class at one of associated institutions (out of curiosity) and the specific class was something I was interested in, but was not offered elsewhere. But I’m not sure it was the correct decision.
For a while, when I was in college back in the '60s, I lived in an off-campus commune. We lived in a very large, very old house with dozens of rooms. There was lots of drug trafficking and using, and the associated music. One night the Vice Squad raided and hauled off several of my commune-mates. There were so many rooms that they totally skipped mine, and I slept through the entire experience.
At the time, I was a knee-jerk Objectivist, re-reading Atlas Shrugged and listing to Rachmaninoff and not using any drugs whatsoever.
I went to an Amway wedding in the 1980’s. My then-husband and I were the only guests who weren’t in Amway. The couple getting married were bottom-level salespeople; their distributor was hosting the wedding in his own home, and the attendees were all distributor-level and up. There were Amway products everywhere - Amway carried a lot of non-cleaning products such as beverage additives and strange devices. There were stacks of motivational reading materials and tapes everywhere, including the bathrooms. Everyone there was as bad a caricature of a salesman as you could imagine. And everyone there tried to bring us into the fold. “HEY, I’M BOB! EVER TRIED ANY OF THIS VITAMIN DRINK MIX? LET ME GET YOU A GLASS!”
It was not an experience I would ever knowingly go into again.
Wow, that is the most bizarre thing I’ve read in this thread.
I think I’ve felt like a fish out of water a lot in my life. I never felt like I belonged in my culture of origin, which was anti - intellectual in a lot of ways, and quite racist.
But
My university experience, coming from that white working-class background to a super diverse college full of wealthy students. Even though it fit me intellectually, I was never fully one of them, didn’t have a fancy private school background, didn’t have money to blow on booze and drugs, and a lot of students had things like family support and I didn’t. And they loved to party and I didn’t. So I just felt very different.
Becoming a member of my husband’s family and being exposed to a hundred new family members with a religious and ethnic identity I do not share along with ostentatious displays of wealth. I thought I felt out of place in college… Lol. The first time I went to a family event it was Thanksgiving, everyone was in cocktail attire in his grandparent’s multi - million dollar home with caterers and servants. The women were flawless, dressed to the nines in designer clothes, and many had variations on the same name. And there were eight guys with my husband’s name. And everybody kissed everybody else. It’s been 19 years and I’m still only sorta used to it by now. And TBH it bothers me that I’m a little used to it. It’s weird to be constantly surrounded by wealth and occasionally benefit from it, but not actually be wealthy yourself.
And the family has a reputation that follows us everywhere. We had a neighbor get one of our packages a while back. He gave it to me and said, “My wife said we should keep it because you can afford to get a new one.”
I thought, “Dude. We live in a trailer park. What about this suggests we share the family wealth?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him it was one of my husband’s action figures.
I was at a graduation party ( college grad ) recently and not surprisingly the attendance was of two main age groups: early to mid twenty-somethings, and late 50s ( my age ) and beyond.
As I made my rounds I guess instinct caused me to gravitate toward the latter but after the initial intros, all they wanted to talk about was guns and politics. Wandering about I ended up having more varied, interesting and pleasant conversations with the younger crowd. I guess it turns out I was a fish out of water, but for a different reason.
