As the world mourns the senseless deaths that have taken place around the world, I thought I would brighten everyone's mood up a little bit. As an Arab kid growing up, I went to an elementary, which was predominately Caucasian kids. There was about 6 Arab kids in the whole school. 

All my friends were Caucasian, which was totally cool. I adapted to making friendship bracelets and reading Judy Blume books. I started realizing a bit of a difference when I would go to their homes. I laugh at it now but I was always so confused as to what was going on and why? I had this one friend in elementary lets call her "Donna," her and her family acted like the Flanders off of the Simpsons. Actually I was convinced it was them, instead of boys they were girls. 

Whenever my mom would make dinner it would always be enough to feed a village. I guess that is in our Arab blood, to make enough food to feed our unborn children. I ended up going to Donna's house after school and I happened to be there around supper time. Their mom yelled out "girls come and eat" so we went upstairs to the kitchen and I was so confused!! But my friend and her sister were like "MOM REALLY THANK YOU SO MUCH, YOU EVEN ADDED SOUR CREAM." She had literally taken a bag of nachos put them on a plate with salsa and sour cream to compliment it. They are like to me, you're so lucky Wedad you came on NACHO NIGHT. Needless to say I had a few chips and went home lol I never ate at Donna's house again. 

Furthermore, Donna and I use to play soccer for many years. One day my mom couldn't take me to our soccer game so Donna said she was able to take me. They picked me up and away we went. We were about 12 at the time. All of a sudden Donna's dad says to my friend "honey are you wearing your training bra?" I was SO HORRIFIED, why were they talking about this lol. She then replies "come-on dad stop embarrassing me, but yes I have it on." He then proceeds to say well you better be wearing one because when you start running you don't want them to be bouncing up and down you know you can get a black eye if one hits you in the face. At this point I just wanted to die. It would be the last time I would ask Donna for a ride. 

Moral of the story is we are all different. Everyone has their own culture that they love. We need to be tolerant of one another and accept each others differences. Ps read this all in the Flanders voice.