Jimmy Yang: How to American

I made my way to the basketball courts. I was a pretty good basketball player back home, so I was hoping to show off some of my skills and earn some first-day respect. For a fleeting moment, Yao Ming blocked Shaquille O’Neal and I thought I could be a baller in the NBA. But for the sobering fact that I was two feet too short, I really thought I could have made it. Then I saw Marquees. Marquees was an eighth grader who was six two and looked like he was twenty-five; he was a grown-ass man. As I walked towards the hoop, he ran by me in a blur and took off into the air for a monster slam-dunk. My jaw dropped to the hot cement. I’d only seen NBA players do that on TV. You are telling me regular thirteen-year-old kids can do this in America? My mind could not comprehend this superhuman athleticism. I scurried off of the court without making eye contact with anyone. My hoop dreams were crushed. Marquees’s dunk made me feel inadequate as a man.

Before first period, I landed in something called the “home room,” a weirdly useless class that briefed its students before they went off to their real classes. Before I even had a chance to settle into my seat, we were all asked to rise up from our chairs. I’m not sure if I understood any of the instructions; I just followed what the other kids were doing. Everyone put their right hand on their chest and looked up to an American flag in the front of the classroom. Then everyone started to chant, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…” I was lost. I looked around at my peers and I saw everyone all uniformly saying the same thing. I thought to myself, Did I just join a cult or something? I had no idea what those words meant. I just pretended to move my lips so I didn’t seem out of place. It was a nerve-wracking two minutes for me. I hadn’t met any of my classmates yet, and I didn’t want someone to notice the foreign kid wasn’t doing something that everyone else was doing. All I wanted to do was fit in, but the Pledge of Allegiance made me feel more foreign than ever. Finally, everyone sat down, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Unknowingly, that was the moment I became an American.

Next, the teacher did a roll call. Oh good , I thought, this is something I can handle. We did roll calls in Hong Kong too. How different can this be? The older white lady teacher started to call out the names: “Marcus Johnson.” “Here!” “Suzy Kim.” “Here!” “Man Sh — Shing, Ouuuy — ann—?” The rest of the class looked around for this unfamiliar newcomer. I raised my hand before she could butcher my name any further. “Here. You can call me Jimmy.” I nervously looked around the room and I saw everyone whispering to each other, discussing this new little Chinese boy. The teacher said, “Welcome, Jimmy.” I certainly didn’t feel very welcome.

Physical education class was the first period after home room. PE had always been my favorite class in Hong Kong. Even though I looked like a tiny nerd, I’d always gravitated towards sports. I might never be able to dunk like Marquees but I was confident that I could drain some three-pointers and score me some new friends. After all, how different could PE class be in America? Before hitting the field in PE class, we had to go to the locker room to change into our gym clothes. I’d never changed in front of other people before, so I waited until everyone else took off their pants before I did. I made myself as invisible as possible and tried to change faster than a new fish taking a prison shower. Then a kid next to me laughed out loud and said, “Are you wearing tighty whities? Dude, that’s fucking gay.”

Everyone looked over and started laughing at me. I couldn’t have been more embarrassed by my tighty whities fresh out of Hong Kong. I hopped into my gym shorts as quickly as possible. Then, the same kid screamed out, “Pull down your shorts!” I was so confused. I just put them on. I stared at him blankly and said, “What?”

He blurted out again, much more insistent this time, “Pull down your shorts, man!” I looked around and everyone was seemingly agreeing with his comment. I went into full panic mode. Am I about to get booty raped like they show in the American prison movies? Is this how they initiate new kids in Los Angeles public schools?

I didn’t know what to do, so I slowly pulled down my gym shorts. As they got past my knees, the kid said, “Yo, what the fuck are you doing? Don’t pull it down all the way, just sag it.” I looked at him, befuddled, with my shorts halfway down my legs. Then he pointed to his own shorts. “Sag your pants a little so you don’t look like a nerd. Nobody pulls their pants all the way up.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I just blindly followed his instructions to pull my shorts halfway down my butt to showcase a little bit of my tighty whities.

I later learned that sagging was an American trend from the hip-hop community. Rappers would wear loose pants hanging halfway down their ass, so they could look like a cool gangster who just got out of prison. Every kid in America was doing it. Pulling your shorts all the way up was called the John Stockton, a super white NBA basketball player from the Utah Jazz in the nineties. Lame. So I waddled around the rest of the class with my waistband around my anus. I thought I looked like I had just crapped my pants, but apparently that was super cool. What did I know? I was a foreign kid who was trying to fit in any way I could. I was just relieved that wasn’t the day I lost my virginity.

Now that my shorts were halfway sagged and my dignity was still somewhat intact, I was ready for some sporting. Much to my dismay, we had to play American football that day. I’d never touched a football in my life, and I didn’t even know what the Super Bowl was. I had tried to watch an American football game once. It had so many rules that it was impossible to understand. What is a first down? What the hell is a pass interference? It sounded like a made-up sport some bros came up with when they were wasted. Like one guy said, “Bro, you can’t push me when I’m catching the ball. That’s like, pass interference, bro.” That’s how most foreigners see American football.

I was lost on the field. Marquees was throwing the ball, or as I later learned, playing the so-called quarterback. I stood wide open in the middle of the field because nobody bothered to cover the little foreign kid in tighty whities, but Marquees took a chance on my tiny geisha hands. He flung the ball in a hard spiral right at my chest with his cannon of an arm. With the quick reaction time I had developed from Ping-Pong, I miraculously caught the ball by pinning it against my body. It was thrown so hard, the momentum took me to the ground. I lay flat on my back clutching the football, not sure what had just happened. Then Marquees stood over me and said, “Good catch! First down!” And that was when I fell in love with American football. Now I am in three fantasy football leagues and I watch seven hours of the NFL every Sunday with a six-pack of Bud Light like a red-blooded American, screaming, “First down!”

There were these two scoundrels in my PE class, David and Diego. Some might call them bullies; I just thought these dudes were douchebags who talked a lot of shit. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Every day in PE class, David and Diego would fire off some trash talk to me, usually along the lines of my mama being fat. I was never bothered by the words, knowing that my mother was a skinny woman.

One day, we were all waiting in line to hit some baseballs. David and Diego just wouldn’t stop. They kept making stupid comments to me and then laughing amongst themselves at my expense. Then, Diego got really close to me and started whispering the trash talk into my ear. “Your mom is a fatass,” he whispered. The words didn’t bother me but his hot breath in my ear got on my nerves and it triggered something primal inside of me. I did something I’d never done in my life. I kicked his ass. I’d never taken any martial arts classes, but there must have been something embedded in my Chinese DNA. Out of instinct, I turned around and round-house kicked Diego square in the gut. He gasped and folded over. Then I jumped up as high as I could, and I came down with a massive karate chop to the back of the neck. He collapsed onto his knees. My adrenaline was pumping and I was ready to finish him. David quickly jumped in between us and screamed, “Stop! Stop!” I stood still in my kung fu stance and stared them down. I saw the fear in their eyes as David picked Diego up from the ground. David said to him: