A version of this piece first appeared in a now defunct blog, bourbonandchai.com. I have made some edits to the original piece.

“Japanese,” she said to me in an aggressive whisper, as I stood by some lockers in the high school hallway. She leaned in, making it almost conspiratorial like an inside joke, only I had no fucking clue what she was on about.

She’d said it before, too, with her wide hyena-like grin. Those first few times, I laughed it off. What else was I going to do? Her crazy eyes exposed little to no depth other than malice. Was that malice directed at me? It wasn’t quite clear.

“Why do you keep saying that to me?” I asked, finally brave enough to try and sort things out.

She sneered this time. The grin was gone. Her eyes narrowed.

“You’re Japanese. I know you are. I’ve got you all figured out.” A deeper fire burned behind her brown eyes that were finally coming to life.

“Uh, no, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

This time, I caught a slight glimmer of doubt behind the malice, the fire dying out almost as quickly as it came to life.

Her hair was always styled in the oddest of ways. It was like a blond brillo pad, coiffed and bouncy on top but a tangled ratty mess at the back like a poorly executed female mullett. She had an unnatural tan because, despite the tan, her skin took on this weird translucent hue. And yeah, now that I think about it, she did look like an albino version of one of those hyenas from The Lion King.

“My dad’s from Iran, and my mom’s from here. I’m not Japanese.”

“Same thing,” she said in a huff as she turned and walked away.

It was the spring semester of my Freshman year in high school. Already an awkward time, nearly thirty years later, it’s still a vivid memory. I wouldn't call it a haunting; I’m more fascinated by the ridiculousness of it all.

We had one more exchange later that year. I’m convinced it was in mid to late April because I had to attend Saturday school for disrupting class while one of my classes had a substitute teacher. And that came right after Tiger Woods won his first Masters.

She had avoided calling me Japanese for several weeks. And maybe that was because I had avoided her. I don’t know. But when my dad and I walked into the school, entering one of the side doors on the West side of campus and stepping into one of the long hallways that led to the library, there she was on the floor, straddling her boyfriend, who had his back up against the wall. We caught them right when they both came up for air as they kissed with no regard for social mores around public displays of affection in schools. It was likely what had landed them in Saturday school, too.

As we started to pass, she looked up and saw us as we passed by. The lights flickered on again, switching from lust to malice. She glanced at my dad and then back at me. A grin started to form.

“Japanese,” she said with that laugh like a hyena. She pointed to me and then my dad as if my dad proved her hypothesis.

“I’m not Japanese,” I responded, shaking my head and stepping over her boyfriend’s outstretched legs.

My dad was probably miffed about having to bring me to Saturday School, was embarrassed more than anything, and likely wasn’t paying attention. He neither wanted to be there nor was going to be late. And he definitely didn’t want to linger.

He said nothing. And when I asked him about it later, he definitely feigned ignorance.

To this day, the whole situation confounds me. Did she think our otherness equated to us being Japanese? Was that the furthest, most foreign place she could think of? Did my dark hair, eyes, and complexion mean that I was, in her calculation, Japanese? Was the only interaction she had with non-whites with someone who was Japanese?

Why didn’t she just ask? But that was likely beside the point. Right? I mean, her intention was to other us, which in many ways we already were. She just got the flavoring of her othering wildly incorrect.

I don’t think I’ve seen her since then. Though, I’m not sure that matters because I probably wouldn’t take the time to ask her why she did it. Unless she brought it up.

In the pantheon of mistaken identities, having someone insist I was Japanese may be the wildest ever.