I was watching television late at night, feeling sorry for myself and the directionless path my life had taken when I happened to catch a grainy, cheaply produced infomercial on the local cable access channel. In it, a very 80’s looking (curly brown hair, baggy brown blouse with huge shoulder pads) Julia Roberts described how she had spent nearly two months on the twin Pacific islands of San J— and San S— doing nondescript, charitable volunteer work and how this sabbatical, though arduous and full of privation, had allowed her find a new peace and purpose in her life. At the end of the show, she encouraged her viewing audience to call the following 1-800 number if they were interested in the experience of a lifetime. I wrote the number down on a receipt I found on the floor and promptly fell asleep on the couch.

I dreamed a fitful, fantastic dream, fantasies of a girl from far away hurtling into my life and knocking me out of the decaying orbits of my life, trips to Asia and half-serious jokes about moving away and what we’d do for the rest of our lives and other improbable notions. When I woke up and crash-landed back to reality, I felt more sorry for myself than ever; I hated my life and its pointlessness and the endless cycle of waiting, waiting, waiting. I grabbed the phone, called the volunteer agency and scheduled an interview for later that week.

Before the interview, the woman behind the counter said I would have to fill out these forms and watch a half-hour video detailing the specifics of life on San J—. She led me into a tiny, pea-green room lined with shelves overflowing with books. She threw a collection of worn pencils and pens on the table, letting them hit the scratched metal surface with a series of loud clacks, warning me to press down hard on the forms and to pay close attention to the video. She left the room and the small VCR/TV combo whirred to life.

6 weeks later, I was at an airport newsstand buying Dramamine with Scott, whose girlfriend was also accepted into the program. She couldn’t speak much English, but that didn’t seem to matter; we communicated just fine when we fucked behind Scott’s back, though neither one of us quite had the words to tell him about it just yet.

—

*Well, I guess that’s sort of an exaggeration:

There was the C family, who despite nominally living the American dream (musically talented sons, Harvard alums, successful postgraduate careers, etc.), forbade the speaking of Chinese in their home. The parents spoke only English to each other and to their children. Nevertheless, Mrs. C used to call my mother frequently to chat in Chinese. As I was a precocious and impolitic child, I once asked her what, exactly, was the deal with thier family. My mother, perhaps revealing exactly where I got my tendencies for blunt speech, sighed and answered (in Taiwanese, of course), “I don’t know, David. They’re just weird.” We didn’t hang out much.

Oh, and then there was also the L family, another successful, affluent group that produced a pair of Ivy League grads. My parents met them through some local Chinese-American pow-wow and did the requisite “you visit my home so I can show off, and I’ll do the same for you” swap one weekend during my early high school days. I had met the younger son at some academic competition of some kind– Academic Team, or Math Team, or something of equally nerdy– and since we both occupied the same social ecological niche, we were naturally competitors, cold and standoffish in that very shy, yet very driven way that nerds naturally fall into. When we visited his house, his mother quite out of the blue asked me in front of the entire group if I was seeing anybody. No, I answered, I’m not, trying to dodge the question. She smiled and rather proudly replied, “My Eric can’t seem to keep the girls off him. He has girls calling all the time, wanting to go out.” I wanted to ask her why didn’t any of these fawning fangirls ever accompany him to the Academic Team competitions, but I was sure even my quick-to-judge mother wouldn’t have approved of that. Later, I found out his bipolar brother once made the 10 hour drive back home to punch him in the face after a perceived insult during an earlier phone conversation, then turned around and immediately drove another 10 hours back to school. We didn’t hang out much, either.

After my grandparents returned home from their 4-day stay in Chicago, my mother secretly revealed to me that prior to departing Florida, they worried we’d have nothing to talk about, that communication would be such a problem we’d end up just doing nothing all weekend. They were surprised to find that despite having lived by myself for three years, I still spoke Taiwanese fluently, enough so that we had no difficulty having long, involved conversations about life, about what their lives where like when they were my age, about what my parents were like when they were young, and how I should dedicate myself to the task of finding a suitable wife, with the goal of producing grandchildren as soon as possible, the usual grandparent-y stuff. My mom told them the secret to my inexplicable ability to retain my Taiwanese language skills: I call at least one member of family, more often than not two or more, every day. Not because I feel a particular need to share the private details of my life with them (our conversations are actually quite banal and usually detail free, usually just family gossip about my siblings), but rather that I worry constantly that without steady reinforcement, I’d slowly lose my ability to speak what is, at least in theory, my native language. Throughout middle and high school I refused to be anything but a fully assimilated American in front of my friends. Since then. I’ve given a great deal of thought over what it means to be Asian, to be an American, to be an Asian-American, and just as I’ve come to a point where I think I have found the desire to grasp on to my cultural identity, when I can finally stop taking it for granted, I can feel it evaporating from my life, one day at a time.

Near the end of the game, with LSU on the brink of what would eventually become the game-winning score, she asked me if this was as good a game as I had hoped. Even though I was very nervous and pessimistic about UF’s overall chances, I smiled and told her Yes, I was having a good time, that this was one of the best games I had ever attended.

“I can’t stand this!” she said, hands pressed against her cheeks. “This is killing me!”

I told her that no matter what the outcome of the game, this would be one she would remember, well beyond her college days. Years from now, this would be one of the highlights of her time at LSU and that win or lose, she got to see a great, great game.

As LSU took the lead for good, and the rest of the student section burst into ear-piercing cheers and hi-fives, I mustered a smile for her and told her, See? Wasn’t it great? You’ll never forget this game, I promise.

After it was all over, my brother and I silently walked amidst the the throng of elated, screaming LSU students and I wondered if I had somehow betrayed my alma mater by failing to live up to example set by the crass, confrontational jackasses who all too eagerly assign themselves the label ‘True Gator Fan’. Maybe I should have taunted LSU or worn a shirt with a boastful logo or celebrated wildly when the Gators scored. Maybe I had sold out my alma mater by being, well, gentlemanly.

Even though I was upset, truly upset at the outcome of the game, part of me was happy that somebody I’d just met (if ever so briefly) was happy and had their fall semester made. Maybe that’s good enough—to conduct oneself amicably in an opponent’s venue, to show respect to your neighbor and appreciate their successes even when it comes at your own loss, that also reflects well on your alma mater as much as a win or a boastful, drunken cheer-along when something good happens. In my years at UF, there were no shortage of jackass opposing-team fans who would sit in the student section and act the boor for the entirety of the game, throwing things, taunting women, saying ridiculous and offensive things in front of families and children, all the name of ‘supporting their team’. I am absolutely set on not following that example, no matter how hated the opponent. Today, even though I didn’t wear orange and blue or sing the alma mater or do the Gator chomp or any of that, I’m pretty confident that I represented the University of Florida well.