Developing a character

There is a very common phrase that one keeps hearing now and then. Many of us will simply not be able to avoid this. “Oh, he is a character, or she is a character!”. I have only used this phrase for a very few people that I have come across in my life, and one of those very few people happened to be this woman named ‘Lu’. I will try to recount here in the series form, some of the interactions that I have had with this lady now and then, that motivated me to write something about her that made me say time and again, “Oh she is a character for sure!”

Lu is an American middle-aged lady I met at my work. The first time I heard the name, it sounded like somebody has been given a name of restroom. Imagine how humiliating it could be to have a name ‘restroom’ for oneself! Suddenly I recall all those Vietnamese or Chinese people who flaunt around with their monosyllabic names on their identity cards. Maybe she is of some Chinese descent if not Vietnamese. Then I saw her in person, the big shocker was, she looks like a petite Mexican teenager. Her face, black hair everything was boasting of her Mexican or Spanish flair but her dress up then was complete American. It was very confusing to even guess where she is from just going by her looks and that name of hers. All in all, she looks quite exotic, deceivingly Latino but with unmissable, that American accent.

Exchanging pleasantries, it was not hard to know right away that she is a very friendly soul and very different than the kind of American women I have met in the past. She seems fascinated by people from the other countries than America itself, though she was raised here in a complete American environment. She kept on telling me she wants to go to Nepal, India, Bhutan and what not. She sure knew how to break ice with some complete strangers. Everyone was fascinated by her aura, and they still are to this day. Just to make it clear right here in the beginning, Lu is a married, middle-aged lady with two kids of her own and a husband who is working for some big car company. So, this write up series are not going to be anything about luscious and titillating encounters that I am having with some hot bimbo at work. I will leave that department to 'Senor Underwear' as he knows his art better to bend the truth and brag about the number of women he has been 'supposedly' scoring for so long while in USA. Kudos to him and his luck!

After a few days of back-and-forth conversation, finally I got to find out the real reason behind all these confusions her personality was generating among people. She was in fact Mexican by birth, but she got adopted as a kid by some quite rich Chinese family in US. That's why the name 'Lu'. She did her schooling everything from here. So now here she is, a typical Latino looking woman but with an Asian name and American by citizenship. She did talk about the attention she gets specially from Spanish men on street, everywhere and many of them start talking to her in Spanish thinking she would reply, but sadly she does not speak a word in Spanish. Anyway, in one of those short talks, she showed the picture of her husband and her teenager sons. Her better half did look a little bit aged than her, but I would not ask her now how she got married and all. Some questions I am still not sure how to put forth to people here in US.

To be continued..

(I will start this write up as a series, as there are quite some funny and over the top kind of experiences I went through while knowing more about this woman. This one is just a backstory of this character that I will be writing about in the impending ones.)