Fat Asians Don't Run

In my life I have had the fortune of coaching for a tremendous organization that values the health, positive self image, and productive group interactions of young children. I love coaching for this organization because all of the people are so committed to this ideal and the children are equally enthusiastic, or at least they usually are.

After a hiatus of two years due to scheduling I am back to coaching, the only thing that's changed is my geographic location. Whereas before I coached in Chicago, now I'm coaching in San Francisco and you'd think the change would be minimal; not so.

The main difference is I'm coaching for a school that has a predominantly Asian youth demographic. Again, while that doesn't seem different - something is different. Culturally I'm used to Midwestern kids of all races; working in Chicago schools provided a well balanced demographic of children.

The first day was full of excitement and anticipation. The school I'm partnered with has kids that participate in a variety of after school programs while they wait for their parents to leave their 9 to 5s and retrieve them. I understand that the school must face many challenges attempting to provide a variety of activities for a bunch of restless school kids who are forced to stay at school before they can go home. However, I would not expect one of those challenges to be asking them to stop studying to engage in physical activity. When I was a kid any excuse to get me out of doing homework short of but not totally excluding manual labor was a fair exchange. The first day of the program there were quite a few protests "Do we have to run? I'd rather be doing homework." Writing that seems more surreal than hearing it and I feel that it's a little too stereotypical; but it happened, it's true.

The second biggest, or smallest depending on how you look at it, cultural difference is size. These Asian kids are tiny and conversely many Midwestern kids are large, but I mean if there were toy versions of children as their are in dogs per se, than many of these kids would fall under the toy category. They are not unaware of their miniature statures or the larger frames of others. This was apparent the second day when to get to know each other we played a name association game, e.g. "My name is Martha and I like mints." Simple, friendly, fun? As we went around the circle many of the kids struggled to find a word to associate with their names but some found no problem finding words to associate with their teammates names. One particularly tiny kid next to me was particularly mean spirited, not caring to hear what others said or to participate. Going around the circle we came to a slightly larger kid, I would say semi unfit but no where near unhealthy or concerning in size. However her tiny teammate disagreed so when she shyly said "My name is Sami and I like Squids." her team mate turned to me and snickered "She means her name is Hammy." I said "That's not very nice" and that quieted her a bit. The next kid to participate was a friend to the tiny thorn and offered "My name is Emily and I Don't like Elephants." I said "Well, I guess that works, but why don't you like elephants?" She replied matter of fact, "Because elephants are fat and fat things are ugly." I was slightly taken aback but not super surprised. I wanted to say a variety of inappropriate things but realized I was talking to a school kid so said instead "Elephants are not fat. They are big and strong and many people hope to grow up big and strong."

I don't know if I'm big enough or strong enough to handle to the little attitudes but we'll see.