Now "that" would have been funny.

"Neeegahhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

The owner of the place where I was doing the rim job is from Beijing. I suspect he has not been in America for very long, because he still speaks pretty rudimentary English. Horrible pronunciation, badly in need of a thesaurus, the standard immigrant's command of any new language. He has three Chinese secretaries under his employment, whose English is pretty much on the same level as his. So they speak Chinese to one another.

Down the stairs, his star salesman sits at his desk. He is not from China. He is a black dude whose mannerisms and general enthusiasm for life reminds me a lot of Chris Tucker.

"Maaan, a BLACK GUY is the most powerful man on EARTH!" That's the first thing he said to me last Wednesday, after he'd pulled up to work and gotten out of his car to unlock the office for all the Spanish speaking warehouse workers, while not bothering to turn down the volume on his sound system that was probably sending vibrations all the way to the owner's childhood home in China. "He BLACK! The president is BLACK! YEEE-UHHHHH!"

I really liked the star salesman at that place. No matter how I was feeling, whenever I chatted with him, my spirits were lifted. Kind of like how I'd imagine it to be for someone who worked at a bling rim warehouse with Chris Tucker answering the phones. I doubt I'll find another guy like him at my new job site out in San Jacinto, where I start tomorrow morning.

I had been itching to ask the star salesman about something I heard my second day on the job for almost a month, but on Thursday, the day before I finally finished the rim job (I hope to never see another chrome-plated car rim for as long as I live, after a month of inspecting three entire warehouses full of them), I broached the topic:

Have you ever noticed that Mandarin has a word that phonetically comes out as nee-gah?

I swear to God this is true. When the Chinese owner was speaking to one of his secretaries in front of me for the first time, he said it every third or fourth word.

"Yao tsao tso sheh sheh neegah kung pao neegah, neegah neegah neegah, sank chao pooh ow. Neegah."

(My face: Is he really saying ... what I think he's saying?)

Which is what I asked star salesman.

"Awwww MAAAN! I know what you sayin', man! Dat's what I thought, TOO! Fool be walkin' by me one day, and I was like, I was like, already in a bad mood, know what I'm sayin'? And he be like, 'Blah blah blah nigga.'"

(My face: convulsing in laughter.)

"So like I said, I was in a bad mood, you know? And I hear dat fool call me a nigga. And in my mind, in my mind I'm like, 'Awww HELL nah!' But I turn and axe him, 'You say sumpin' to me?' And he turn, turn and say, 'No, no say nothing.' But I axe him again, 'You got sumpin' to say?' And he be all confused, he say, 'No, no. No have nothing to say.'"

(My face: crying.)

"So I axe one of his secretaries, 'Hey, in Chinese, y'all got a word that sound like nigga?' She didn't know what I be sayin', so I was like, 'Sumpin' like "nee-gaw," sumpin' like dat?' And she told me, 'Oh yeah! "Nee-gah" mean "that" in Chinese.'"

The word that comes out as "nee-gah" means "that" in Chinese.

The only thing I asked star salesman when he was done with his rant was, "Why did they not capitalize on this joke in any of the three 'Rush Hour' movies??"