On Being a Chinese Grocer

Back when I was a child, all of my family worked. We all lived and worked in the same building since my Mom and Dad owned a grocery store. Week days were spend holed up in the public school system during the day time, and afternoons, me and my sisters trudged home-ward bound to relieve my parents, especially when we got older.
When I was young, I handled the cash and tried to help bag groceries, even though I could not reach the counter top. I loved helping out, even though in one case I was barely was able to lift the bag from the ground, spilling all its contents. Every day, our parents worked, never skipping a Sunday, and our store got its share of memorable customers.
Sometimes a young man brought his monkey to the store, bringing about lots of good conversation and curiosity. During Halloween, young men came in the store to buy food coloring for their hair due to fact that Halloween costumes were home-made rather than manufactured. The bulk of our customers were primariy white and all was not always well.
In the late sixties, my mom and I drove around in a chevy and sometimes encountered a racial slur from a young white male. It didn't matter that I was a young child or that I was with my mother, racism raised its ugly head. My mother also shot back a response, not matter who it was. "Shut up, you igorant bum," she should sneer.
Kids too would yell at us, "Go back home, Chinamen," they would yell.
My sister thought she was smart and shouted, "Shut up, you war,!" Actually, she meant, "whore." but who knew the word.
Myself, I was more shy, and listened to my siblings and mother tell off the racists. Sometimes, I would yell out and sometimes, on a bad day, I wished I was white.
I didn't know about the civil rights movement too much or about Dr. Martin Luther King. In high school, we learned about ABC's and never about learning to live together.
As a young girl, I played with dolls that were Caucasion and watched TV in black and white.
Things really were black and white back then.
With the arrival of color TV, I started to notice a more, relaxed mood. Then Bruce Lee came to the big screen around the seventies, and I started to appreciate my skin color.
Even though I experienced the occasional racial incident, inside and outside the store, I raised my head a little higher each day, knowing that no matter what some people said, they couldn't take the fight out of us.
And besides, since most of the stores were closed on Sundays, (Back then, the majority of stores were closed on Sundays), ours was a business that accepted all customers, regardless of their ignorance.