i am jack pulido

     As I sat in the bar Saturday night, drinking my third or fourth double shot of whiskey and practicing my new word of the night, “Божественярско (Bojestvenyarsko),” while Tony The Barman drew a stick figure picture of Tito and his wife in order to explain a joke,  I had a startling realization. You remember in high school, there was always that foreign-exchange student who you thought was a little bit slow? I am him.

In my high school, our foreign exchange student wasn’t actually a foreign exchange student. He was from China, or Taiwan or the Phillipines (I suddenly feel really bad that I can’t remember where he was from…) and his parents owned a Chinese restaurant in town. He had moved to America and wasn’t going back. It always seemed that Jack was around whenever my group of friends got together. I don’t remember inviting him ever, but nonetheless, he was there. People would talk to him and ask him things but it usually had to be translated by another friend into simpler English. He would get invited to parties, to events, to almost everything, but he didn’t say much and he always laughed a split second after everyone else. People would get him to say funny things to others and we would teach him slang. Of course, the next time we would see him, he would use the slang in a particularly inappropriate time, and that would make us crack up all over again, accompanied by plenty of high fives and thumbs up.

I always thought that Jack was slow. I thought that because he didn’t say much and didn’t always understand everything, he was stupid. I’ll be honest, I thought Jack was a little retarded. And now I think I am paying for thinking that. I realize that I was the person who was ignorant. Maybe it was because I never took the time to really get to know Jack. It wasn’t until our senior year of high school that I learned Jack was really into Anime and could draw some great pictures. But there is something bigger. I used to judge people too quickly. I think I still do. All too often, I did and do make a judgment on people by the way they speak, what they talk about, or what they are interested in. Poor Jack, because he spoke slow and with a strong accent, couldn’t talk about deep philosophy and wasn’t interested in track, history, or classic literature, I assumed he was a waste of time for me. It was too hard to talk with him and too hard to connect with him.

I said now I am paying for being this ignorant, but that’s not right. I am so lucky here. I am a foreigner in a foreign land speaking a very foreign tongue, but I have people who are patient enough to put up with that. I have learned quickly enough to recognize that absolutely demoralizing phrase: “Не може да разбира. (He can’t understand).” But I have also learned to recognize the equally uplifting I-can-do-anything-get-me-a-gold-star! phrase “Браво, Анди! (Bravo, Andy!).” I have been amazed to see people take the time to pantomime a joke or even find a paper and pen to draw it out. I have been invited over and over again to parties and banquets, even though most of the time I just stew in my seat, drinking their alcohol and wishing they didn’t play that damn Pop-folk so loud. I still have a hard time figuring out why these people are putting this much effort into getting to know me, especially when I couldn’t be bothered to put in 1/100th of the effort to get to know Jack. At the end of the day, I give up trying to figure it out and chalk it up to love. When it comes down to it, this is love. A love that is divinely human. Reaching out to someone simply because they need it. I need this attention and this support and this camaraderie. Everyday, I am thankfully to be here and experiencing this love.

And so, though I graduated from college with a High-honors degree in Anthropology, I can speak eloquently on the leading causes of the Peloponnesian War, I read and understood Tess of the D’urbervilles, Heart of Darkness and Catch-22, and I can name the capitals of most of the countries in this world, I still sound like a moron when I get “watermelon” and “lover” mixed up in Bulgarian. But I am beginning to be okay with it. I am accepting that I am Jack Pulido.