I thought you could say hold the noodles, like the way people say hold the rice. But you can’t, not if it’s a noodle dish. If you do, then there’s no dish, just some scraps of food. So, my order put a stick in the works at the takeout counter. Two things to bear in mind. I was dealing with a couple of guys who’d grown up over in China and then arrived here at a fairly advanced age. Their accents were strong, their English words few. The other thing: I felt like I’d been found out. I didn’t feel like I’d made a mistake on a minor point and perhaps looked a bit foolish (and perhaps didn’t). I’d been shown up during an imposture.
The manager, a heavy-faced man with a skimpy but distinct black mustache, stood ready by the cash register. His colleague, gaunt as a wire puppet and wearing monumental black glasses, was hovering close behind. He served the food, so he was the guy I’d first stumped with my order. The server tried to get me straight, then the manager stepped in, and now we waited. The manager’s finger hovered near the keys. But first I had to make sense. I’d been giving myself airs as somebody who can function, giving my order like a normal person, and here I was: somebody who didn’t make sense.
The story ends soon. Nothing dramatic happened and for me there’s nothing to complain about. But the moment crystallized the cloud of foolishness floating between me and my life. I felt panicked and ashamed. Maybe for five seconds, maybe less, but I felt like the jig was up and I’d just revealed myself: as a person I didn’t belong with people. Some people have imposter syndrome when teaching medical school. I get it when ordering takeout—really, I get it in just about any situation. In this particular situation we have me, diagnosed last year with diabetes, dropping by a Chinese place for fast food and then remembering a little late that noodles, not just rice, had become forbidden. So don’t just hold the rice, hold the noodles. I thought that would cover it, that I was saying something a person would say in this situation; and it turned out, no, the rules were all different. Here was one of those things that everybody knew but me.
So, I talked to myself. I reminded myself that nothing here was a big deal and all I had to do was function, not be weird about it all, and so on. And a solution did prove easy enough. As you might’ve guessed, the server walked me along the counter’s placards with their pictures of different meals and I picked out a meal with no rice, no noodles. No words passed, which helped. The cashier rang up my order, I waited at a little table, and in 10 minutes I was walking home with a double order of tofu and cubed pork mixed with I forget what. A double order because I like to eat, and the ingredients uncertain because I hadn’t taken note of them. I just wanted to be a guy who made sense. Picking a meal would do that for me and that’s where my focus lay. Luckily the food turned out to be pretty good.
On social media and in light little articles, people are always confessing to what flustered schmucks they are. Maybe this episode is no different. But it did bring out for me certain big themes of my life: I never have the information I need, I have to act like I do, and I’m always a moment away from getting found out. After which I’ll stand there, a freak who doesn’t belong. I think all this is because I’m autistic and nature has indeed made it harder for certain basic types of information to get into my brain and, accordingly, life wears me down good and hard.
The two guys didn’t treat me like I was weird. Maybe most people wouldn’t have; I don’t know. But they didn’t treat me like I was weird, and I feel like disaster was averted because of that. Thank you, two guys from China. For this much longer let my life remain in one piece.