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I once lived in another province where there was only a 5% (P<0.05) chance to meet someone who understands my language. I remember this other time two guys came to queue behind me in a fast food Walk-thru🤦🏾♀️ and we were both there to order takeaways. One of the guys didn't even bother to whisper since he assumed there was zero chance that I would know our language. He confidently uttered his opinion in my language: "I bet she can't even cook a decent meal and she relies on these takeaways almost daily"
I turned to face him and as expected the double standards were coming from the one whose face was nowhere to be found. His looks were exactly like John Cena's Catch Phrase -"you can't see me". As if that was not enough his wallet seem to live by the phrase too since their order was paid by the other guy who had the "I am God's masterpiece" look. I don't mean to throw shades but ladies do it too. The friend whose posture is hard to tell which direction she's going is always the one to say "your not our type or I don't date broke guys".
Anyways, I responded in our language with a smile: "can you even cook a decent meal yourself?" The shock on their face- they laughed and then "created in a rush" face claimed it was just a joke. I just gave a fake laugh and life had to go on. But now when I think about it, I don't blame the guy - his reaction is a very common thing in my culture. A lady is expected to be well-groomed to cook her food, feed others, and do all the house chores. But men are praised for being able to finish the largest portion of the food we dish them. It is even normalized that a happy married man must carry around a pot belly and his wife must be a really good cook if his appearance competes with hippos.
For those men with slim genes, at least he should look like a seahorse with an ecto-belly and lower back tilted backwards. It's crazy that women are even trained to believe that if you're a good cook your man will not leave anything on his plate he will even ask for more food. And most boys aspire to be heavy eaters being promised they will grow to look like their dad or some adult male figure around them who could pass a Jojo tank look-alike test!
Sadly my young brother was seen as a "famine" escapee due to his slim body growing up. We had those far relatives who would just randomly appear at the gate and you would wish our dog could sniff their skirt and repeated socks aggressively to scare them away. They used to scrutinize my young brother that he is too slim he needs to eat well to look "fresh" like his cousins. And when we look at our little cousins they had cute watermelon heads and were a young version of Majin Buu from Dragon Ball Z - fresh and cute👀.
We all use to brush it off thinking the little cousins were just having different genes that's why they looked fresh and not bony like what their parents would call my brother. Then came a day we had those "meet and greet" relatives events which use to reoccur every year rotating all families, we call them "let's get to know each other".
That time it was our turn to host other relatives (Thank God now I'm old enough to have a say if I want to go or not - my introverted side always wins). On that day the cute watermelons were there and there was this interesting one whom I thought that boy should have been named "food lover". I mean nothing in a plate defeated him and I am talking about an 8-year-old who was the same age as my brother.
Little food lovers sat with a mountainous plate which could qualify to be a platter for three. The boy was trained to eat until he burps as a sign of satiety. Seeing the boy munching, my little brother was envious and he went to get more food. My parents were quite strict and we were always warned that overeating is greed and a sin- but I always thought it was their smart way to save on food and toilet paper. But that day they were lenient to their bony fish son to have a mountainous plate too. Bony fish ate more than half of the mountainous plate and started panting.
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He soldiered on and munch a couple of spoons until he was left with a quarter in his plate - then he started crying out of the blue. Hey, the Lil food lover walked to his side to comfort him and say: "my dad always says you do not need to drink any liquids while eating because you will not have enough room for all the food." The pain of having to hold in the laughter because my bony fish brother was in pain but this boy's home training was hilarious.
I found it funny that his dad was training him to be a little heavy eater champion and he succeeded - That was a 10-0 score with my bony fish brother. When we realize that bony fish was in pain we gave him medication to induce digestion and then after roughly 30min little rascal was feeling better. But I think if my young brother gets a rematch now he might beat Foodie to it or at least get a draw.
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