I AM OBSESSED WITH MY NEIGHBOR WHO IS AN UNHOUSED ASIAN MAN
This man has endured these streets, hustling at the end of my block on the corner for the past two and a half years. He walks and talks like every elder Asian man I know. He shares similar physical features to my dad, to my uncles, to my dead grandfather. Naturally, I believe we are related. Asians are all each other's 5th cousins somehow. Growing up around my grandfather, my mom’s dad—my Gong Gong, my Ông Ngoại was challenging. My mom, my grandma, the aunts, literally everyone in our family just accepted that my grandpa was a grump. He growled unhappily at surprising things–noises we never heard, the news, the weather. The women hushed us quiet if more than one of us kids laughed at the same time all the way over at the kids table because it upset him. " Grumpa " disliked the sound of his own grandchildrens' joy. Grumpa was our nickname for him. I am being hyperbolic: elderly Asian men are rarely left alone, and for this man to b...