This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,7
and I have a standing gig taking a first look at that week’s trade-ins, including some pieces that the owner, Jordan, gets off eBay. It’s not a particularly good haul this week, mostly 1990s X-Men that’s already been digitized on Marvel Unlimited, so it doesn’t take too long. Still, my stomach is rumbling by the end. Or maybe it’s just leftover nerves. “Guys, can we go over to the deli? I need a BLT or something.”
“Bring me something back,” Manny says, adding an unnecessary, “no piggie.” Manny isn’t a particularly observant Muslim, but he’s pretty firm about the no-pork thing. “I just don’t understand why you’d want to eat an animal that literally eats garbage,” he says whenever I have a ham sandwich.
“We didn’t ask you how your interview at the hospital went,” Javier says as we walk to the deli down the street. He does that a lot—replays conversations in his head so he can follow threads and tease out social cues that he can act on later.
“The interview went okay, but they can’t pay me, so it’s probably not worth it. I’m just afraid my mom’s going to make me do it ‘for the experience.’” I make air quotes.
“You can always look for another job that pays,” Javier says.
“Yeah, because jobs for high school sophomores grow on trees around here.”
“There’s a job right there.” Javier points to a sign literally in front of our faces, on the window of A-Plus Chinese Garden:
HELP WANTED:
SEEKING SUMMER MANAGEMENT INTERN TO HELP GROW OUR BUSINESS.
WEB PAGE DEVELOPMENT EXPERIENCE PREFERRED.
COME BE PART OF AN
A-PLUS TEAM!
I look at the sign and I can’t help it. I bark out a laugh. “Um, no,” I say, shaking my head.
“Why not?” asks Javier curiously.
I blink, and think. I do that a lot when I’m around Javier. Not only because he’s brilliant, but because he has this utterly objective view of the world that occasionally forces me to rethink my own biases.
When I contemplate it, I laughed because of the visual image of me passing out fortune cookies and rolling sushi. It could easily be a Saturday Night Live skit, with the lyrics “One of these things is not like the others” playing in the background.
My hunger pangs twist into shame. I think about my sister, and how she says that your reaction to cognitive dissonance says volumes about who you are.
Five seconds in, five seconds out.
I close my eyes and breathe in the warm June air. The scent of fried rice mingles with the smell of yeast from the bakery down the street.
The unsettled feeling in my stomach calms. I look back again at the HELP WANTED sign. It’s a good poster. The job’s an opportunity to manage a team and grow a small business. I have at least one of the skills they’re looking for. Whoever made the poster has hand-illustrated it with little anthropomorphized sushi rolls and dumplings with thought bubbles saying things like “A-Plus needs YOU!” In addition to a call-back number and an e-mail address, each of the little tear-offs at the bottom has a different emoji.
As gently as I can, I tear off the tab with the shrug emoji.
This Is My Brain on Twitter
JOCELYN
I would love to describe my family’s restaurant as a dive, but honestly it’s not cool enough to be considered one.
To be clear, the restaurant isn’t dirty—it’s just old. When my dad first visited A-Plus Chinese Garden, he was pleasantly surprised. There were no rat problems or fire hazards, and the building breezed through inspection. The decor wasn’t awful for a place that wasn’t really a sit-down spot—there were four booths with mostly intact red vinyl coverings, and room for a few tables. The walls were plain but didn’t need repainting. I hated the name, though.
“Isn’t that the name of a convenience store? Can we change it to ‘China Garden’ or something?” I knew there was no way he’d take the “Garden” out of the name. The word for garden in Mandarin is “yuan,” which is a homonym for money. You don’t mess with those things.
“No, no, no,” my dad insisted. “Keep A-Plus and we always be at top of search engine list.” I think he just didn’t want to spring for new signage. Six years later, same name, same ’80s decor. One winter I tried to dress the place up for the holidays, but my dad wouldn’t okay the purchase of Christmas lights. “You can’t turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.”