It is an unpardonable insult to say to one's aged grandparent "After you are dead..." Instead, one says "When your children are 120 years old..." I asked several Hmong people I knew how they would feel if a doctor told them their child was going to die. "A doctor should never never say that!" exclaimed Chong Moua, a mother of three. "It makes the dab come closer to the child. It is like saying okay, okay, take her." Koua Her, an interpreter for the health department, said, "In Laos that means you're going to kill a person. Maybe poison him. Because how do you know for certain he's going to die unless you're going to kill him?"

I remember countless occasions, after I had ask him to provide a rational explanation for a nonrational custom, when he just shook his head gently and said, "Anne, may I explain to you again. The Hmong culture is not Cartesian."