Chapter 1: Part 5: Still Counting

And thus it was that my sister faced life, excelling at a few things such as art and not at others. What was perhaps most notable about my sister was her lack of assertiveness. This played a huge part in family interactions as well as with friends, coworkers, and just about anybody when there was a disagreement, no matter how agreeable or combative. It came down to a few types of situations.

The first was when my sister wanted something different than another person, say, my brother, but there had to be agreement. For instance, our parents said that we could buy some ice cream and Mai wanted drumsticks and my brother, Tien, wanted ice cream sandwiches. My brother could persuade my sister Mai into getting ice cream sandwiches because related to her impressionable mind was a lack of assertiveness so marked that most people could persuade my sister Mai to do well, a lot of things. Save things that were drilled into her not to do out of fear, the fear of God or Satan, to many, both fears are indistinguishable. But if fear did not play a role in it, then Mai could be persuaded to do and also think many things that she would not have done or thought on her own.

Which leads to perhaps the most notable aspect of my sister's "specialness", as my mother put it many years later, when her English skills caught the nuances of political correctness as used in dry humour, yes with an "our". My sister Mai, very often, too often not perhaps, did not think of do things that would occur to an ordinary person. Ordinary is defined as the average considerate person who takes into account other people's feelings. Mai definitely could feel empathy, but it was in situations that were closely related to her world. Where things did not affect her micro world, which was identical to her macro world until someone shook her into following the teachings of empathicalism, my sister did not think about other people.

When she made herself lunch, you could be sitting there and chime in, "I'm thirsty," My sister, in her youth, would say, "me too" and make herself a glass of lemonade (Asians made it with limes) and sit there and drink it in front of you. She is better today, a lot of reminding and scripting. Today, if you enter the room, all sweaty from a five mile jog in the noonday summer's heat, and Mai sees you throwing yourself, panting and exhausted in a chair, she might, "You look tired. Is it hot?" And you answer, "Yeah, I just got in, couldn't take the heat," Mai will make herself some lemon-, I mean limeade, and sit there across the table from you, and commiserate about the heat, "It's been hotter this summer, must be climate change," and sip her limeade without offering you any, until you ask, "Can I have some limeade to drink?" wherein she will loop at her glass of limeade and say, "Oh, sure. I pour some in a cup for you."

My middle sister was unable to take into account other people's feelings unless told to do so or unless it directly impinged upon her own sphere of goals, wants, (getting married) and requirements (working to pay the bills so that in the meantime, she could get married).