My celebrity doppelganger

There's this joke that all we Asians look alike. A joke. But like a lot of jokes, there is a basis in truth. Growing up in Hawaii, nobody thinks all Asians look alike. We can tell. Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Korean... we can tell each other apart. Mind you, we take advantage of the confusion from mainlanders who can't tell us apart. My brother was cast for a Magnum PI when I was a kid as a Japanese chef. He's Filipino Chinese.

Whatever.

One of my best friends from high school is 2 years older than I am. When I graduated from high school, I sent her my senior portrait. She was going to University of Oregon at the time. It is easily the whitest place I could imagine except for when I went to UW but that's getting ahead of myself.

So I get this weird phone call from her. After she greeted me, she says, "just go with it." She then announces how her friends cannot believe that she knows the chick from Karate Kid II. That they have all looked at my senior portrait and are astonished that she knows me.

For the next hour or so, I end up talking to a bunch of college guys gushing over talking to a celebrity. Telling me how pretty I am. Asking me what Pat Morita was like in person.

Me = Tamlyn Tomita??? I'm not sure how Filipino/Chinese = Japanese but we really had those guys going for a while .

I do wonder if she ever told those guys that it was all a joke. Wouldn't it be funny if she never did? That those guys are out there today telling their friends about the time they talked with Tamlyn Tomita on the phone.

I have to admit, it makes me laugh. But not that cute little Japanese girl laugh with her hand held demurely in front of her mouth.

Because I'm PINAY, gunfunnit!