Tourism Curse? I Lost My Grandma Among All the Other 5’ 1” Grandmas Wearing Sun Hats and Umbrellas
‘She’s the one in the white floral hat. Oh. There’s 7 of them’
June 21, 2022
By: Julia Zhen
MIAMI, F.L. – 31 year-old Gina Lee recounts the stressful day where her family lost track of their elderly Chinese grandmother among a sea of other Asian tourists wearing similar hats and using identical umbrellas while on a trip to Miami, Florida.
“It all happened so fast,” describes Lee. “We had just gotten to the check-in area to go on our tour of the Everglades, and then all of a sudden, we realized we had lost her in the parade of all the other Asian families holding their colorful umbrellas and large floral sun hats to shade from the Florida sun. We had heard horror stories of other Asian grandmas getting lost in similar Where’s Waldo situations, but we didn’t think it would happen to us,” stated Lee.
It did not take long for the Lee family to immediately scour the location in search of their elderly grandmother.
“She was also wearing blue sparkly Skechers, obviously from their walking collection, and that did not help AT ALL! It turns out all the other families had hit the same outlet mall on their way to the Everglades too!” exclaimed Gina Lee’s brother, Harold.
“The worst part was, we knew that she could’ve been walking for at least 20 minutes at that point. With her new shoes, sun hat, umbrella, AND her iPhone 8 camera, we knew that she could’ve gone really, really far.”
The Chairman of the Tourism for Asian Families Collective, TAFC, Anthony Ming, had reiterated that these incidents happen often.
“We always do our best at the beginning of each tourism season to warn families of the dangers of allowing their elderly family members to wear the same generic sun hats and use the same umbrellas from Target. We always tell them to add some kind of distinctive trait to the items so that it will help them to easily relocate those family members when they inevitably wander off. Asian grandmothers are famously known to find a shady spot to sit when they get bored, so they want to sit down. It’s not their fault,” explained Ming.
“But at the end of the day, incidents like this are preventable. Just one vibrant streak of bright orange duct tape on the umbrella or hat can make a world of a difference.”
By day’s end, the Lee family had finally relocated their grandmother while she was at a McDonald’s having a hot fudge sundae.
