The Gift of Efficiency

Or: The story of how I took my Chinese mom to a fancy restaurant on Christmas Day 2006, and mild hilarity ensues

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The scarf was made from silk. It had blue flowers on it.

“No.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Mom asked in Chinese. “Blue is a color, for boys.”

“Mom, no.” In English. “A thousand times no.”

“Wah, THOUSAND NO,” Mom mocked. She balled up the fabric and stuffed it in my inside jacket pocket anyway. “Not a gift.”

“Not a gift,” I repeated. We stopped exchanging gifts the year Mom knocked over the two Christmas trees in a fit of rage, another argument with Dad about Grandma. They were artificial trees anyway, and they would have stayed up until Chinese New Year otherwise.