I heard that. You, you, and especially you, you dirty-minded little thing—I'll see you after class. Not everything in my life is about that.

Despite everything that's said on television and in those alluring ethnic cookbooks with their come-hither-and-eat-me covers, I've been wondering if I'm the only gaijin hitting up the pan-Oriental markets this side of the Mason-Dixon line. If the stunned and frankly nosy looks of the shopkeepers are any indication, my hair and eye color are either setting off warning bells or I've suddenly started looking like a shoplifter.

There aren't too many Chinese markets in Huntsville, despite UAH's propensity to attract non-Americans to its graduate engineering programs, and my guess is that the shopkeepers are always surprised and taken aback to see anyone they don't know, much less someone that looks like, well, me.

My most humiliating experience at a Chinese market came a couple of years ago at the now-apparently-defunct Shinsegae. I'd worked up the courage to wander through the store, going from item to item scanning hopefully for clear packaging or occasional English inscriptions in the hope of understanding what was inside. I'd only found one item that I needed, but wrote down a few things to look up when I got home. After leaving the shop, I sat in my car and pulled out my omnipresent Small Spiral Notebook to write down some notes, only to be startled by the shopkeeper knocking on the window of my car and demanding to know what I wanted, and was I a health inspector?

I never went back.

Shortly thereafter, I found Choi's, which was slightly closer to me, and slightly less daunting in that the shopkeeper might stare at me and follow me around the store, but seemed to draw the line at following me out the front door.

Small blessings, I suppose.

Of course, then there was the time that I tried to buy curry at Choi's, only to learn that Choi's was apparently one of the last grocery stores on the planet not to take credit or debit cards. While I've since encountered a few other ethnic grocery stores like this, they are a mystery to me. How does a business in the age of Visa and MasterCard survive without taking plastic?

I remember putting my curry back on the shelf, embarrassed, and slinking home.

Today, I picked up cat food at the pet store, got cash back at the counter, and headed to Choi's on a quest for dried mushrooms. Huntsville's slowly gotten more accepting of foods that aren't quite White Bread American Pass The Beef Y'all, but dried mushrooms of any kind are still impossible to find anywhere aside from a Chinese market, so it was time to swallow my pride and pop in.

After discovering that Shinsegae appeared to have closed (it was always a pretty dark and forbidding place, so it could've just been a scowly Monday for them) I headed to Choi's and tiptoed in, hoping I could slip in unnoticed.

Whatever.

I was too proud to go to the desk and say, "Hi, I suck and can't read any of this stuff, so where are the dried mushrooms?" Instead, I wandered the aisles and played a fun little game of "I wonder what that is, and if you can eat it?" with myself.

I did, eventually, find the dried mushrooms.

I've apparently learned more about Chinese, Thai, and Korean food in the past few years than I'd given myself credit for. There were far fewer mystery foods, and more things that, while exotic and unusual, were at least familiar to me.

I paid in cash.
I wasn't followed to my car.

Success.

What were they going to do to punish me for being late, put me on a jury?

As I made my way through downtown, carefully following the directions to reach the fabled Free Juror Parking, I called the courthouse and apologized. "I'm stuck in traffic," I said, "but I didn't want you to think that I was skipping out on jury duty."

The voice on the other end of the phone chuckled and told me to drive safely.

I thought I had escaped the grip of That Morning™ through the power of modern cellular technology, until I reached the fabled Free Juror Parking—or, at least, reached the cheerful orange sign and uniformed police officer informing me that juror parking was full and would I please go down the street and park there?

Great, I thought, now I'm even later. Just what I need—my county clerk thinking I'm a dork.

After one near-collision with a moving vehicle that I swear wasn't there when I checked the rearview mirror, I maneuvered the Jetta into a parking space. Yes, it's true, I can fish out my key fob and fire the Lock Door mechanism while simultaneously slamming my car's door shut with my butt and taking off in a dead run. In heels. And a skirt.

That, my friends, is one of the tests of true womanhood that they don't tell you about in your high school health class.

On my way into the courthouse I mentally checked the contents of my bag: knitting, needles, scissors, snacks, drink, and—

"Ma'am?"

I was halfway through the checkpoint before they stopped me.

"I can see that you knit, but if you're here on jury duty, tomorrow…" He pointed to my bag. "Bring smaller scissors. We're really not supposed to let scissors this large through."

I nodded, and headed upstairs. Stupid courthouse architecture. Yes, I could see where the second floor was, but where did the 2xx numbers begin? Where was this mythical room 217? As the laws of probability were still in effect, room 217 was on the last portion of the second floor that I checked. I all but skidded into the room, juror summons in hand, and presented myself penitently to the face of the county clerk, who was surely ready to devour me whole for being fifteen minutes late.

"I'm sorry. I called…" I apologized, trailing off when I realized she was counting … something. Interesting. That was a massive stack of juror information in her hand, I thought. She finished her half-audible count and looked up at me.

"Do you have any reason that you need to be excused from jury duty?"

I thought about it. I'll admit this weakness, because you are my friends; yes, I stood there and asked myself if I was going to be like a lot of people I knew and try to get out of jury duty, or if I would put my money where my mouth was, and be honest.

Honesty won. "No, I'm pretty much the perfect juror." I shrugged, feeling at peace with my fate, having said the words.

She put down her slips and stared at me. One moment became two, became three, became an interminable four. "Think really hard."

In that tiny blip of a moment: huh? Did I say the wrong thing? Is she toying with me? Waaaaaaait. Is she—no, she couldn't, not really… I stood there, clutching my bag of knitting and snacks, and said the only thing that came to my mind: "Well, I am hypoglycemic, so I'll have to eat every couple of hours."

She took my juror summons and began scribbling on it.

"The judge hates it when people eat in the courtroom. You're—" and the scribbles coalesced into words—"excused." She winked at me. "We have too many people this week and will have to dismiss about 30 people. Go home."

As I walked out of the courthouse, I plugged up my earpiece.

"Jeff, you are not going to believe this…"

… and to you, my friends, I solemnly swear that is how I got out of jury duty.