Because of Your Skin

Installation number 2 of the Erika saga.

So I come into class looking adorable (exhibit A: The myspace pic) I was a few minutes early and when I sit down, a girl to my left compliments my shirt. Before I can even say thank you, Erika says "and nice shirt too." I smile and say thank you and cite Forever 21 and H&M as the two stores who made this outfit possible. I settled in a little bit into my chair and Erika, from two rows of seats away slowly says, "Are you from... Greek descent?"

"No, Peruvian"

I get a look from Erika. You know how some people look like animals? Erika looks like a puffy faced fish, not a puffer fish, just a fish that might have gotten punched in the face a few too many times. Her blank stare is reminiscent of the glazed over eyes of a freshly iced trout.

In an effort not to lose myself in the black holes of her pupils, I said, "Sorry if that's disappointing...?"

"Oh no," Erika's had a cold since the beginning of school, her nasally voice is grating, "I just ask 'cause of your skin"

"Yeah, I'm kinda yellow..."

And that was it. She didn't elaborate at all. Didn't say, "oh no, that came out weird" or anything. I wasn't offended, I'm not an idiot. However, it does kind of piss me off that she thinks that's cool to say. I'm torn over whether it's because she's black, and minorities don't feel weird calling out other minorities (maybe?) or she's an idiot and didn't know any better. Either way, is that cool to say to people? "Oh, I'm asking because your skin is a strange color I'm not used to" is acceptable? I'd never think to say *just* that. I might say that and add something about someone's features or whatever.

Oh well, I kind of got complimented on having a tan, racism or not, that's pretty cool.

This girl in my film class is an idiot. Part 1

So there's this girl in my Film Studies class, we'll call her Erika, because that's her name. There has never been someone so undeserving of being in a high demand 400 level class than this girl. We did a little, "getting to know you" thing on the first day. At this point she wasn't officially in the class, she was trying to get into it and had come to the first day hoping that she would be able to get a spot. God knows why. The teacher, Professor Collier, (whom I absolutely love because he's passionate about what he teaches and teaches it well and in an interesting and engaging way) asked us to go around and say our name and the best and worst movie we saw over the summer.

The most popular answer for best movie was, predictably, Inception. Erika broke the cycle. It could be generally agreed that every movie that was suggested as the best of the summer, was "good." This is when Erika's turn finally came, she opened her mouth and my opinion of her was forever set.

"Awwwwm, I think my best movie would be Twilight Ellipse... I mean, like, Eclipse, and my worst movie is Dear John." Her reason for hating Dear John was because they fell in love "in like two weeks." Um, it was the whole summer, and how long did it take for Edward to fall in love with Bella you hypocritical moron? I'm not saying Dear John is amazing, but really? "Twilight: Ellipse"?

The next class we were talking about Alfred Hitchcock movies and Collier had a little spacey moment and was asking what the Norman Bates movie was. Obviously, we all said Psycho, but poor little Erika. She turned to me and said "Is he talking about just Psycho Psycho or American Psycho?" Well let's see Film Studies student, we're having an Alfred Hitchcock discussion and the clue was "Norman Bates." I swallowed back the creeping bile in my throat and politely said "Just Psycho."

Today she didn't know who Michael Cera was and when asked about the "mise en scene" of a still of the Buster Keaton movie we saw last week she said, "Well I see some oblique angles?" (there wasn't one) "And there's some vertical lines, and horizontal and then some diagonal... I saw a mixture of things." Wow. Never talk again.

She then granted me my wish, at least for that class period, and fell asleep.

Bitch.