My best friend’s wife has taught their kid to call me Big SisterTall Nose…
(of course not in English).
I told her twice that it bothers me but she thinks I am kidding.
I love this girl. She is one of my best friends. And I can’t seem to get her to see why this would bug me.
Other day, we were running around the grocer and he was screaming out about me being his BenDanDeJeiJeiADoA…
So not compfortable.
What would you do?
(and lets not now hear a bunch of biggoted tripe and anger. I want to know how to handle my FRIEND)
You feel that its rude and inappropriate (YOU FEEL, not IT IS) and
That more importantly, its hurtful to you and that you’d really appreciate her having a word with the kid.
If she’s really your friend, she could maybe argue about point 1 but I don’t see how a friend could really argue against point 2.
I agree with Sandman. If I remember right from my Human Relations class, you should always aproach a situation like that with “I feel”, something about being assertive and not aggressive or passive aggressive. Now if only I could remeber that when I’m in that situation.
Be emotionally manipulative. The next time she calls you that name, pretend to break down and cry. Put her on a massive guilt trip. That’ll end it for sure.
Giving her kids equally insulting names is yet another option. Like “Mr Peed His Pants” or “Ms. I got 35 On My Math Test”. Or, better yet, “Mr/Ms (insert name)'s Inconsiderate Mother Let’s Them Call Me This”. To rub it in, you can ask your sister-in-law how to say some of the latter words in Mandain so she’s an unsuspecting contributor to her new nick name. Then you can rub it in later when you get her kids to call her that. Then you can say, “I told you I didn’t like it.” Then the cycle continues and everyone will wonder what came first: the chicken or the egg.
[quote=“j99l88e77”]Giving her kids equally insulting names is yet another option. Like “Mr Peed His Pants” or “Ms. I got 35 On My Math Test”. Or, better yet, “Mr/Ms (insert name)'s Inconsiderate Mother Let’s Them Call Me This”. To rub it in, you can ask your sister-in-law how to say some to the latter words so she’s an unsuspecting contributer to her new nick name. Then you can rub it in later when you get her kids to call her that. Then you can say, “I told you I didn’t like it.” Then the cycle continues and everyone will wonder what came first. The chicken or the egg.
I have my co-workers do the big nose gesture once in a while and I sometimes I wonder if I did the slant eye buck teeth gesture would they think it’s funny. Serious a lot things that are offensive back home aren’t here. My co-workers always refer themselves as “yellow”, if said that to my Asian friends back home I would get probably get my ass kicked.
I bet your friend’s wife doesn’t understand how much it bothers you (this lack of sensitivity about racial stuff seems quite common in Taiwan). And every Taiwanese I’ve talked to about it professes to believe that “A doh a” is not negative. They’re well-meaning, too. They just don’t understand Big Nose culture.
Since directly talking didn’t work. I’d suggest that you try talking to your friend about it, who can then talk to the wife. Not in an offensive way, just say it bothers you. Coming from a third party, the message might get through better.
Or. On an admittedly unlikely tangent: any chance the wife is jealous of you? That could change the equation. But a female best friend of the husband might rouse a bit of jealousy, especially in Taiwan.
Yellow has a different connotation in Chinese, where it means perverted.
Whenever my younger students tell me I have a big nose (你鼻子好尖!), I ask them what’s wrong with their nose, whether they had walked into a tree (你的鼻子怎麼那麼醜？你走路撞到樹嗎?) If they say that I have a lot of chest hair (老師你胸毛很多!), I ask if they’re aliens (你怎麼沒有毛？人類都有毛. 你是外星來的嗎?)
Perhaps teaching little children isn’t my designated calling in life.
