There was a brief time in high school where I would wake up early every Saturday morning and go to soccer practice, which is odd since I never had more than a casual interest in the sport. The only times I could remember playing soccer were during recess during elementary school, and even then, it was just because it was the thing to do. I played Little League baseball as a kid, I would play in a roller hockey league for a summer as an adult, and in the time between, I played badminton. This practice wasn’t part of an organized league, it would be a group of mostly older guys from a few different Korean churches in the area. In fact, there was only one guy at these practices that was my age, we’ll call him Walter. We would carpool to practice together with a couple of the older men.
Walter went to a different church but he seemed to be quite at home in anyone’s car. Walter was one of those kids who demanded that he always sit shotgun and he always had to be in charge of what music was playing in the car. He would blast nothing but K-Pop to my chagrin. When he found out I didn’t care for it, he decided he would get on my case about how I liked “white music” (perhaps he didn’t know I listened to hip hop since he probably didn’t know who The Roots were). It apparently became his calling in life to be an ambassador on the behalf of the Korean music industry and that he should educate me on K-Pop on how I could be a better Korean. He definitely looked the part with his bleached (more like orange) hair and über long bangs. This “education” caused a lot of tension between us, since I never agreed to it, and since he was so condescending about it. I never took to his teachings, and since we didn’t go to the same school or the same church, I thought that I wouldn’t have to deal with him after soccer was over, but that wasn’t the case.
Little did I know that Walter and I would end up enrolling at the same college. Even though we went to a really big school, I kept on running into him. I tried to avoid him, but we had friends that lived in the same dorm, so it was unavoidable. He thought we were friends, so while I tried to avoid him, he kept on trying to get through to me. He wasn’t the only Korean person on campus trying to show me the error of my ways, so I just started trying to tune any person out who started any introduction to me with “Are you Korean? Do you speak Korean?” While these questions seem innocent enough, they were usually followed by “Are you parents ashamed of you? Why do you hate being Korean?” and hearing those questions definitely got under my skin. My parents weren’t ashamed of me, I wasn’t ashamed of being Korean, but there was an assumption made that since I didn’t grow up speaking Korean, that there was some sort of negative story behind it. I would explain that I grew up in the Midwest with very few Korean kids to talk to in my neighborhood, but my words would just fall on deaf ears.
It seemed like this stuff mattered more with Koreans than other Asian ethnicities (I could be wrong), which frustrated me even more. It would take me a couple of years, but eventually I got over it, and surprisingly, one day, Walter got over it too. After we moved out of the dorms after freshmen year, I didn’t see him for a while, and when I did, he was a lot more pleasant to be around. He still had the bleached bangs, but he was no longer getting on my case about my lack of Koreaness. In fact, there was an instance where one of his non-Korean friends asked why there were so many adopted Korean children. Walter gave a predictable answer: “Because Korean babies are the best looking.” I gave a more self-deprecating and cynical answer: “I guess Koreans don’t know how to use birth control.” At a younger age, my response would’ve caused a lot of animosity between us, but Walter actually laughed at my comment. I’m not sure what had happened to make him change his Korean pride way of life, but I’m glad that something did. Maybe he finally became more comfortable in his skin, which allowed him to accept me for who I was, or perhaps he realized that being a Korean pride zealot wasn’t fun for him anymore and that he didn’t want to make being Korean a career.
As much as it’s documented that I’ve always hated going to mall with my mom, I always enjoyed going to the grocery store with her. There are many reasons for this: being able to get a sneak peak on what my mom was going to make for dinner for the upcoming week, getting candy and toys from the coin slotted vending machines, and I also remember killing a lot of time by talking to the guy who worked in the back, behind the milk section of the store. He would push the cartons forward and refill the empty spaces (Does this job still exist?). I would never see what he looked like, I never asked him for his name, but I would ask him questions about his job, sports, and what college he went to. I wasn’t trying to insult the guy by asking him about college. As a young kid, I assumed everyone went to college. (or jail was the alternative, I guess). Talking to that guy, along with being able to press the pedal that moved the conveyor belt in the checkout lane gave me plenty to do on our trips to the market, and even as an adult, I’ve still managed to find it entertaining, even though Southern California grocery stores have taken away the ability for customers to control the conveyor belt.
As an adult, I’ve found that the most entertaining thing to do at a grocery store is to see what the people ahead of you in line are buying. In a strange way, their shopping carts give you a small window into their lives. Perhaps, they’re just buying food for just their upcoming meal, perhaps they’re buying their groceries for their week, or maybe they’re just buying a case of beer for a party they’re going to, but it’s uncanny how much information the contents of a person’s cart can give you. I could come up with more than a handful of categories for my fellow shopping brethren – the single bachelor and his microwave dinners, the bitter divorcee and her cheap wine, the college student and their top ramen, and so on. The aforementioned shoppers tend to carry an air of melancholy since this is their everyday lifestyle. It may not necessarily be permanent, but for the time being, this is how they live their lives. As I look back, I can say that I’ve been no different.
In college, my roommates and I lived down the street from a grocery store. We often did our grocery shopping during the twilight hours. Whether we did this to avoid crowds, or whether we shopped late at night just because that’s what college kids did, I can’t be for certain (I’m pretty certain that we were pillaging candy from the bulk candy containers). We were definitely stereotypically poor college students. During our twilight grocery excursions, we would be regularly seen with a bottle of olive oil, a bottle of balsamic vinegar, and a baguette of french bread. While these three items might not scream “college students”, the fact that we would buy these items in the middle of the night clearly does. There were no proteins, no fruits and vegetables, just bread and “sauce” for dipping. This was definitely a reflection of who I was then: poor and I ate to live opposed to living to eat.
I’m obviously in a different stage of my life now, and my grocery cart reflects that. While I still might pick up the occasional baguette of bread, my cart is now balanced with proteins (steak, chicken, pork, fish), vegetables, and fruits. I learned how to cook after college so I found that a little bit of money can go a long way if you are okay with preparing meals by yourself. You would be able to easily discern that if you had a snapshot of my college cart and my present cart side by side. I would probably be a little embarrassed by hypothetical snapshots and I would probably implore you “not to judge me”, but you would anyways, and you should do so. I still judge the people ahead of me in line to pass the time, and I gain a lot of amusement from it. So to the couple who bought store made fried chicken, two packs of Klondike Bars, a handle of the cheapest grocery store brand Vodka, and a pack of Marlboro Reds, I thank you (I also can tell what you guys were up to that night… gross). In a super voyeuristic and twisted way, you’ve brought the youthful joy of hanging out at the grocery store back to me, whether you knew it or not.
My mom like to freely suggest to me that I should have some strict rules about my car and who should be allowed to ride in it. These suggestions have good intentions behind them, and often have incidents to back them up, but they sound kind of crazy, like the suggestion that I should refuse to drive people in my car or to let them bring food or drinks inside. While I’ve had friends spill drinks or leave trash in my car, I don’t think I should start making a list of people or items that are banned from my vehicle. It’s even funnier to think about the fact that, even with these rules, she would tell me to give a ride to drunk man that I’ve never before just because he’s related to me.
I was playing video games at a friend’s house when my mom called me. I was supposed to visit my parents down in San Diego that day, so I assumed she was calling me to ask me if I had started my way down there, and then to ask me why I hadn’t left yet. I was partially correct. She wanted to know if I had already left for San Diego, but was actually relieved that I was still in Orange County. She wanted me to pick up my cousin from a hotel in Irvine and to bring him with me. It sounded like a simple enough request until I found out that the cousin I was to pick up, was a cousin from Korea that I had never met before. It’s already weird enough when you know you have to spend an hour plus car ride with a complete stranger who’s actually related to you, but it’s worse when your sister informs you “I don’t think his English is very good”.
I drove to the hotel and peeked around the lobby, trying to find my cousin. I had no idea what he looked like. I just knew that he was in town because of work, so I had some simple parameters to work from. I needed to find a Korean man who wasn’t wearing a Hawaiian shirt or any attire that would make him look like he was on vacation. I thought I had spotted a man who could fit that description in the lobby, but as I approached him, his wife and child had walked out of the elevator, so I eliminated him as a possible suspect. As much as she is forgetful, I was sure my mom would’ve mentioned his wife and child needing a ride as well if they were hypothetically also in town.
After a few more futile passes around the lobby, I headed back to my car to tell my mom that I couldn’t find him. She gave me the room number that he was staying in and told me she’d give him a call to see if he was there. As I got off the phone, a man knocked on the passenger side door of my car, and it was him. I unlocked the door for him and upon opening the door, I immediately caught a huge whiff of beer. My cousin, who I had never met before, was drunk, which exponentially heightened the chances of this being a super uncomfortable car ride. He introduced himself to me and his English didn’t seem to be as bad as my sister had advertised. He told me that he was a little late because he had just gotten back from a business dinner, which explained why he reeked off beer, but I was still a little worried, not because I’ve never driven a drunk person around, but because I had no idea what kind of drunk my cousin was. If he was a happy drunk or a sleepy drunk, I could manage, but if he was an angry drunk or a depressed drunk, I wasn’t sure how I would be able to survive being in a car with him for over an hour.
Luckily for me, he was pretty tame. I asked him what he was working on and what company brought him into town for business. He asked me what I did for a living and we basically covered that basics as far as two long lost cousins getting to know each other. Things didn’t get awkward outside of him asking me about who I was dating, and then advising me to find a Korean girl to make my parents happy opposed to the Chinese girl that I was currently in a serious relationship with. I brushed it off as quickly as I could and tried to not be offended by his suggestion since he wasn’t from the States. We eventually made it to my parent’s house, and after spending a day in San Diego, I drove him back to Irvine. It was a pretty drama-free trip.
He was a nice guy and I’m glad that I finally got to meet him (not that I knew that he existed before that weekend). I especially appreciate the fact that he didn’t throw up in my car, but even if he had, my mom would’ve helped clean it up, because that’s what family does. Family is about having a higher tolerance and a greater faith in each other than is recommended. That’s why I turned the other cheek when my cousin suggested I break up with girlfriend on the basis of ethnicity instead of punching him in the face. Besides, I don’t need my mom to make a new rule about me physically attacking people in my car.
I don’t exactly have a reputation for “getting my hands dirty”. I’m not a “take it apart and put it back together” kind of guy. It’s not that I’m totally against the idea or that I’m disinterested. I’ve actually thought about buying a decent guitar and swapping out the pick ups and the tuning pegs, but I just haven’t had the stars align to where I’ve had the time/resources to embark on that journey. I enjoy a lot of things in life, and I like to understand as much about those things as I can. My friends definitely understand that about me, which is why they’re surprised that I haven’t tried brewing beer yet, since tasting different kinds of beers has been my M.O. lately.
Bruce decided to buy me a beer brewing kit for my birthday and while it arrived a couple week ago, I haven’t tried my hand at brewing beer. It’s not that I don’t have any interest in it, it’s because it’s been busy and extremely hot outside. I don’t know a whole lot about brewing, but I know that most beers need to be brewed in a semi-cool temperature, so I’ve been hesitant to start brewing in the summer. Brewing takes a long time – 3 weeks to ferment and then another 3 weeks to bottle, so I don’t want to screw it up. If I have to wait 6 weeks to see the fruits of my labor, I want to make sure I’ve done everything in my power to make sure its done right. I don’t have all the time in the world. It’s not like I’m in college anymore.
During my freshmen year, I lived next door to a guy named Sheldon. He was a Biology major and while he was the same age as me, he looked a lot older since he had a full blown goatee. He would take advantage of his “older” appearance by going to the grocery store to buy alcohol without getting carded. He would usually buy a bottle of wine, a baguette of french bread, and a couple of other things, so he would seem less suspicious than if he were to show up to the cashier with a handle of Jack Daniels and a 2 liter bottle of coke. Eventually they started to ask him for his ID, and he would tell them he left it in his car and he’d leave. He knew he couldn’t go to the cashiers that carded him previously so after about a month, his options all dried up and we no longer had access to booze.
Instead of giving up, Sheldon decided to get creative about accessing wine. He decided that if he couldn’t buy it, he would try to make it. So here we were, in a freshmen dormitory, with carafes filled with grape juice, yeast and whatever else he thought went into wine. While he did some research on the internet, and while I’m sure his science background helped, I’m pretty sure the ingredients he needed to make wine weren’t available in the grocery store. I’m absolutely positive that’s where he was getting his goods, since I don’t remember him getting anything shipped to him as far as grapes were concerned. I didn’t say anything about it. I was just a lowly film major and if it all ended up working out, I didn’t want to get cut out of any wine with my negative attitude.
Eventually the day came where the wine was ready and Sheldon had his over in his room for a tasting. I will give him credit for buying french bread and oil/vinegar to “classy” up the event, but all in all, his wine was a failure. I didn’t drink enough of it to confirm whether it had become alcoholic or not since it tasted like barbecue sauce and not like wine. We appreciated his valiant effort but in the end, it was all for naught. He wasted a lot of time and money trying to make his own wine in his dorm room, and had nothing to show for it. He ended up dumping it all, since it was undrinkable and he decided to give up on his dream of turning his dorm room into a winery.
Obviously, with my home brewing kit, I’ve been given detailed instructions, and ingredients that have been tested, so I probably won’t end up making beer that tastes like barbeque sauce. I can look at Sheldon’s failure as a cautionary tale, but I can also look back on his experience with envy. He threw caution in the wind, and swung for the fences at at time in our lives where there was little recourse (he ended up getting kicked out of school, but that’s because he was playing too much Everquest). In my home brewing process, I won’t have that same thrill, but at the same time, I probably won’t fail, and at this point in my life, that’s probably a healthy thing for me.
My parents were never in the PTA at Palmer Lake Elementary School. I’m sure the Korean/English language barrier was the biggest factor in their absence, or perhaps they found the PTA superfluous. They might’ve been too busy with work when my sisters were in school, but they weren’t while I was in school, so that’s not much of an excuse. I don’t know what was discussed at the meetings and why these meetings took place at all. Since my adult life seems normal enough, I’ll assume that it wasn’t a big loss that my parents didn’t get involved, and I’ll also assume that it means my parents weren’t crazy after seeing a lot of crazy parents in the news throwing tantrums about their kids’ grades.
I’d think that the idea of a PTA is so that parents know what’s going on at school, what’s expected of the kids, ways they can help, etc. That sounds useful enough, but I’ve realized that no matter how much “guidance” the PTA will give me, I will be a terrible parent at helping my kid excel. It won’t be for a lack of trying, but artsy, sarcastic Ryan should not help his kids with anything outside of math, and possibly science, but I was never particularly good with science, and perhaps english, since I’m obviously running on with this sentence and I realize that switched from talking in the third person to the first – this is quite a train wreck.
I was in Oregon a couple of years ago to see my nieces and school had just started for them. My niece, Jamie, had just come home and started doing a work sheet that her teacher had given her. It was a questionnaire on one side and it was a table on the other side where she was supposed to put various subjects/tasks in three categories: ”like a lot”, “am okay with”, “don’t like”, or something in that nature. I sat at the table with her while she worked on it, intrigued, since I usually see my nieces during holidays or summer, therefore they never have any school work to worry about. So this was something new for their uncle to experience.
As far as the questionnaire went, a lot of her answers were pretty common for a 9 year-old. Person you’d like to meet: Selena Gomez (Disney Channel actress), place you’d like to visit: Florida (Disney World), etc. It surprised me that she was skipping a lot of the questions. To me, these weren’t necessarily things that required a lot of thought. She wrote “I’d like to be a rich person” for the question of “What do you want be when you grow up?” and this angered my sister. My sister told her to write something like “you want to be a pet doctor”, but my niece refused. I offered a bunch of more interesting options like “you want to be the head of FEMA, but you’re going to do a good job”, but those suggestions fell on deaf ears.
Honestly, I had no problem with my niece’s answer. It’s not admirable, but it’s honest. It’s not like she wrote “marry a rich guy”, or something less than noble. My sister was telling her to lie and this made me wonder about the ethics of being a parent. I understood my sister’s case because you don’t want your kid to look like they have a lack of morals, but at the same time, ordering your kid to lie on homework is pretty hypocritical. Of course, as the hip 26 year old uncle, I was merely there to play Wii games with the kids, buy them ice cream, and threaten to make them smell my armpits. These more important decisions were not part of my job description – they’re not my kids. When I finally have my own, I highly doubt that I will force then to lie on their homework.
Not that I’m calling my sister a bad parent. She’s just trying to prevent her child from getting on the teacher’s crap list. She’s involved, she’s helping, and she’s trying to guide her kid towards a more fruitful goal than just being rich. It’s all commendable, and perhaps it’s what the PTA preaches to my sister. I just wonder if teachers can read through these answers and pin down the kids who are being fed answers from their parents. At least when I have kids, the teachers won’t have any doubt, because they’ll see the answer “I want to be the head of FEMA.”
There’s an interesting dynamic between my four older sisters and me. It’s not just because I’m the only boy sibling, it’s because of the huge age gap between us. All my sisters are roughly a year to two years apart, and then I came along 8 years after that. When I was a kid, my sisters were quick to point out that the large gap indicated that I was an “accident”, but since I was a boy, I countered that I was the best “accident” to ever happen to our family. My parents wholeheartedly agree with me to the chagrin of my sisters. To be fair, my sisters have been more than kind to me throughout my entire existence, but it doesn’t seem to make the dynamic any less weird. When I was a kid, my sisters were dating, and I kind of unknowingly became a pawn in the game of chess between my sisters and their suitors.
Obviously, when you date someone, you want to make a good impression on their family, so it would make sense that at some point, these guys would want me to approve of them. Since I was literally just a little kid, I find it odd that I’d been taken out quite a few times (I have lots of sisters, it’s not that they dated a lot of guys). My sisters weren’t going to take any feedback I had about the guys seriously.
“Was he nice to you?”
“Yes.”
“What’d you guys do?”
“He bought me ice cream.”
“Do you like him?”
“Sure.”
Unless a guy punched me in the face, I was probably always going to say I had fun and the guy was nice, so I doubt that it was my sisters’ idea that I needed to be wined and dined, at least not with these not-so-serious boyfriends. The serious boyfriends, I could understand. Perhaps they thought I was some sort of guard dog that could smell shadiness. There’s Something About Mary hadn’t come out yet, so I don’t think they viewed me that way, but I never asked. I think their money would be better spent on my other sisters (closer in age, more likely to have an opinion) than a boy who doesn’t even understand how babies are made, but that was their choice, and I definitely reaped the benefits of it.
I particularly remember one prospective suitor, not because our time was particularly interesting, but because he wasn’t actually dating my sister, he was just interested in her. He went to our church, so it wasn’t like a stranger wanted to take me out. He took me to the mall, he bought me some frozen yogurt, and then he bought a bouquet of roses for my sister. There might’ve been more to the day, but that’s all I remember. My sister never actually dated the guy, which is kind of sad. I know she had valid reasons, and I’ve never questioned her judgement (she’s happily married now). He wasn’t a loser, he was just kind of a dork, who happened to like my sister A LOT. Even I picked up on that.
As kind of weird as it was in retrospect, I give that guy credit for trying to score points with my sister with the gesture of taking me out. His intentions were clear, he executed his plan, but unfortunately, he just came up a short of his goal in the end. I don’t know what he ended up doing with his life, I hope that he ended up with a life that he was happy with and that he doesn’t live with any regrets about my sister (my sister is in a healthy and happy marriage so don’t be a creeper). He was able to give it his best shot and he was able to state his case.
In my life, I try not to have many regrets. Failure is a part of life that everyone experiences, so it shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of. Most of my regrets stem from not being given a chance, not because I tried and failed. While no one in my family keeps in touch with this guy, I don’t think this guy was a failure by any means. He didn’t achieve his goal, but he took a risk and put his best foot forward. He may not have been able to earn my sister’s hand, but he was able to gain the respect of a young boy. He may have thought of himself as a reject and a loser afterwards, but as sad as it sounds, he was probably more of a man than most of the people that have passed through my life since.
Over the weekend, a good friend came back to town for a friend’s wedding. They had been gone for a few months and were only in town for the weekend. I got to church late, so by the time I got there, there were plenty of people in the process of catching up with her. I figured that at some point, I’d stop by to say ‘hi’, but I wasn’t going to wait in line. I knew that she’d be back home for good in a month, so I wasn’t going to be upset if I didn’t get that time to reconnect. Besides, she was in town for a wedding. I wasn’t going to take things personally if catching up with me wasn’t on her agenda on this trip.
I eventually did get a few minutes to chat. Since it had only been a few months since she’d been gone, it was easy to fill her in on what she had missed. Sure, we had Facebook, e-mail, and blogs to fill in some of those cracks, but it was nice to just let the conversation flow rather than sitting down and typing up bunch of concise facts. Even though the time was brief, I didn’t feel like my time was rushed and I was able to share what I needed to share. It’s not like my life had radically changed in the last 3 months and it won’t likely change too much in the next month by the time she comes back.
A year or so after our move to San Diego, Bruce’s family came to visit us, or more accurately, they came to California to visit some relatives and were nice enough to swing by to see us for a day as well. Since they had other obligations, their time with us seemed brief but I was obviously thrilled to see them and made the most of it. After their visit, there was a 6-7 year gap between that time and the next time I would see Bruce. We kept in touch through the years with a couple of letters, the occasional (more like annual) phone call, and eventually instant messenger/e-mail when the technology became available. I didn’t see Bruce again in person until my sophomore year of college and when I went to the airport to pick him up, I wondered if it would be really weird. We were no longer kids, we could legally drive cars. We pretty much missed each other’s teen years (though that may have been a good thing for us). The dynamic in our friendship could’ve understandably been a lot different, but there I stood there at baggage claim wondering if I’d even recognize him right away when he walked by.
Luckily for us, things hadn’t changed too much. We still loved to eat and play video games. He got along with Phil, who generously drove us around, and I didn’t notice any awkward silence. I don’t remember discussing what we had missed out in each other’s lives at all, but I’m sure there was a little of that. I think we spent most of the time focussing on the present and the surreal notion that we were actually sitting in the same room as adults. I think I asked him if he thought I talked like I was from California now or if I seemed different because of my move, but the only thing that seemed to stick out as different was how large the size of the asian population was at my school. I think a lot of the big changes in either of our lives were mentioned mostly in passing and we weren’t very aware of the weight that they carried. My oldest sister had gotten married and had a child. I was already an uncle. That’s kind of a crazy notion, but I don’t think I understood that then.
I’ve always found catching up with people as kind of an intimidating task and sometimes I’ve even found it intrusive with the friends who’ve dropped off the face of the earth and have come barging back into my life wanting to know everything they’ve missed out on. I’m not sure where this disdain stems from, since I can’t really think of any specific instances where I’ve had a bad experience. I’ve had to catch up with someone who missed out on years and years of my life in Bruce, and I’ve caught up with someone after just a few months of being out of the loop, and I found both instances to be refreshing. Perhaps I can put whatever bad taste was in my mouth behind me, and look forward to a future where I’m happily sharing about my past.
In 8th grade, I went to the local record store to pick up a CD. I couldn’t go to a big chain store like Tower Records to get it because it was by a local band that was on a small label. Perhaps, it’s because of the limited availability, but it seemed like a lot of kids in my classes were excited that I bought it. Lots of kids wanted to borrow it, and since I had just bought it, they knew that they would need to let me borrow something in return. This is not a story to boast about being one of the first kids at my school to own the debut album by Blink 182 (I’m sure I wasn’t), this is a story about how I used that album to find something even better.
In middle school, they pulled me out of the gifted english and history classes, because I was pretty ambivalent about my studies in 6th grade. This allowed me to get good grades in 7th and 8th grade, while still being ambivalent about my studies. So, in 8th grade English, I talked about music a lot with a kid named Billy, who was really into exploring punk rock, so I knew he’d want to borrow the Blink album. (Later that year he’d end up going to one of those radio station sanctioned concerts that was headlined by Blink 182 and some band called Radiohead – the mid 90s were a weird time) In exchange for Blink 182′s Cheshire Cat, he let me borrow Red Medicine by Fugazi.
I’m not sure if he decided to let me borrow Red Medicine on a whim, or if he gave me a few options and that’s what I picked. Red Medicine was obviously a much more difficult listen that Cheshire Cat. The production was more raw, the guitars weren’t always exactly in tune, and the vocals were a little harsh, but I immediately loved the album. It was what punk rock is supposed to be, passionate and fiery. While I still enjoy Cheshire Cat, it’s not a punk album, and Blink 182 is not a punk band. Fugazi opened my eyes to what punk was at the exact same time that San Diego was becoming known as the punk/ska capital of the music world.
Eventually, Billy and I had to return the CDs to each other and after that year in middle school, we kind of lost touch. I was placed back into the gifted english and history classes for high school, Billy stayed in the regular classes, and I didn’t really see him again until prom where he showed up in a purple pimp suit. I don’t think I talked to him directly that night but I remember him being particularly obnoxious. It saddened me a little that I felt that way. I should’ve been proud of him that he was going against the grain and being edgy, but I don’t think he was trying to be punk rock that night. At least, not in the Fugazi way, maybe in the Blink 182 way. Even though I was wearing a tux, complete with a boutineer, I didn’t feel like I had sold out.
It would’ve been nice to lie and talk about how Billy’s appearance at prom had reminded me of how un-punk rock I had become, but it hadn’t. It actually made me wonder if the CD exchange from 4 years earlier, had altered both of our life journeys. Billy went down the road of dick and fart jokes with Blink 182, while I raged with indifference against the ridiculous and unforgiving social fabric of high school society. While I’m far from what Ian Mackaye would want me to be, he’d probably appreciate that I understand that I’m not very punk rock opposed to thinking that being juvenile and obnoxious were the ideals.
We were young, and hopefully that was the last time that Billy ever wore that outfit. I may never see him again, but I do wish him well. I did really like talking to him in class in 8th grade and I’ll never forget that he introduced me to a band that was much much better than Blink 18s, and for that, I will always be thankful.
I grew up with a girl whose parents worked together. They didn’t own their own business, they just happened to both be employed by the same company. I’m not sure if they worked in the same department, I’m not even sure what they did, I just know they arrived at work together and they left work together. They’ve done this for roughly 30 or so years, and even though I don’t know what they do, I find the whole premise kind of romantic. For some reason, I find it more romantic that they don’t have their own business, and that they both choose to work together for someone else. From what I can recollect, they were married before they started to work together, so there was never the “dating someone from work” dilemma.
I’m not hoping to find someone that I work with or will eventually work with. I think my friend’s parents have a unique situation. I also think that there’s a huge difference between how our parents prioritized things and how we now prioritize things. Working at one place for over 30 years is unheard of these days, especially when it’s not a business that you can call your own, or a job that you can’t consider as your “dream job”. Like I mentioned before, I don’t remember what they do for a living, but I’m betting that if they were actually passionate about their jobs, I would have some sort of memory of what it was. I did see them a few years ago. I do remember them still being at the same place. I just forgot to ask what they did after all these years.
It probably doesn’t matter to them that I don’t remember. They’re just happy that they live comfortably and that they were able to raise their one daughter off of their income. As far as I can tell they have passions outside their job, but they’ve been fine just making a living. I think my parents were the same way. I think a lot of parents in that generation had this mentality as well. It’s something I kind of envy.
I’ve been drawn to art ever since my adolescent years. I’ve always wanted to do something artistic. Whether it be playing in a band, being a screenwriter/director, and now as some sort of essayist/short story writer, I’ve always felt that it’s what I should be doing for a living. My expectations aren’t as grand as one might expect. I don’t expect to ever be flying around in leer jets while swimming around in a money bin full of money, but I’ve always felt like making art for a living was what I’m supposed to be doing, even though I’m able to find steady, stable, employment elsewhere.
In college my first goal was to record some music, which I was able to do before the end of my sophomore year. Later, my goal became to finish a full length screenplay before I graduated. Once again, I was able to accomplish my goal, and I was pretty satisfied with myself. I completed my goals, and I didn’t embarrass myself in the process. I didn’t care that I didn’t get a record deal out of my EP or that I didn’t sell a bunch of copies of it. I just cared that people liked it. For some reason, starting with that screenplay, I’ve needed my penchant for writing to become a sustainable job for me and unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet.
I feel like I’m dawdling. I had a friend in college who told me that he smoked a lot of weed in high school. After freshmen year in college, he had an epiphany and stopped smoking so he could focus on his studies. He got into grad school and is now doing research that he’s really passionate about. I really wonder if I’ll ever have a similar epiphany where I’ll stop complaining in my mind about my stable, reasonably stressful job that I currently have. I don’t think it’s bad to look for better opportunities, but I wish I could be happier with what I have.
Perhaps I haven’t found the trigger for my epiphany to appreciate “normal work” yet. Perhaps it’ll be something profound like having my first kid, or maybe it’ll be something that barely seems related to the future of my life. Maybe in 30 years, I’ll look back at these times and laugh at how foolish I was for thinking that I needed to create art for a living and that I could never picture myself working at one place for 30 years or maybe I’ll look back and smile at the struggle to finally get to where I wanted to go. Either way, I hope I’ll finally be able to find that peace.
When we moved into our first apartment in college, we thought it would be best to divide up the responsibility of setting up utilities. I was in charge of the setting up the electricity, Phil was in charge of setting up the cable/internet package and so on. This was a good idea since we had no to very little credit history (we all could build credit) and many of these companies forced us to put up deposits (since we had no credit history). We ended up getting a cable/internet/landline package because somehow it was cheaper than simple cable/internet package, Phil informed us. He also told us that the phone number for our apartment was ###-7825, or ###-SUCK. He specifically picked it out so it’d be easy to remember even though we all knew that we would rarely use it, since we all had cell phones. We would occasionally use it if we ordered a pizza, and we registered the number at our local grocery store to gain discounts, but it was never used to regularly make calls.
I ended up leaving the apartment after a year and started my journey of bouncing around Orange County. First, I moved closer to campus, then to the beach, then back towards campus, before finally touching down in the city of Orange. I didn’t have a particular affinity for any of these places, but I stuck around anyways. Going back to San Diego seemed like a retreat, not just because I would most likely live with my parents again, but because I wanted to eventually make it as a screenwriter in LA, and San Diego was in the opposite direction. I never moved to LA because I could never find that right combination of finding a job there and people to live with. I could write from Irvine, or Orange, and then make trips up to LA whenever the studios started calling, but they never did. After a while, it occurred to me, that proximity to LA probably shouldn’t be my only reason for staying in Orange, so I embarked on a little “tour”. I made a list of places that I might see myself settling down in and went to visit them. Fortunately, I had friends that lived at all these specific stops. Unfortunately, none of the places inspired me to pick up all of my belongings.
I’m not necessarily restless to get out of here, but the fact that all my roommates have picked up their things and left- well… it makes me feel uneasy, like I was somehow left behind. I know everyone’s timing is different, and perhaps I’m supposed to be here for a while longer and there’s some special purpose for that. I’m wondering if the dreams that I’m pursuing are the ones I’m supposed to be pursuing and if I’m honestly in the right place at the right time. Is this just a pit stop before I head towards bigger and better things, or is this it? I, by no means, live a miserable life and if this is all it’s cracked up to be, I would like to try to appreciate it more for what it is than what I would like to be. I mean, I should probably do that anyways, but right now I have goals and dreams that I haven’t attained, and it definitely puts a damper on my current reality.
While my roommates have dispersed across the country, I’m still here. In fact, I work within a few miles of where we went to school. When I go to the market, I enter our old landline phone number ###-SUCK and it still works. I don’t even know if any of the roommates still remember it or the story of how Phil chose that for us. I wouldn’t say college was the best time of my life or any of our lives, but we all keep in touch more or less, so the friendships that were formed in that apartment were definitely not superficial. We haven’t had a set reunion or anything – that’s not our style, and our lives have spread us pretty far apart. We’ve been out of college for seven years now, but it seems much shorter than that. I’m not sure if I feel that way because I haven’t felt like I’ve accomplished much or that I haven’t made a crazy cross-country move, but I think staying in an area for 7 years is an accomplishment in itself. I’ve managed, with plenty of mistakes and growing pains, to live on my own, and I think when I first got out of college, that was my main goal anyway, and it’s a goal that I’m glad I achieved.
Back in college, I would volunteer at church by teaching 5th and 6th grade kids. For the few years I was there, there were 4 or 5 consistent volunteers that I worked with, and then there were a few others who would drop in every few months. One of the people who made more than a couple of guest appearances was a girl that I will refer to as “Working Girl” because her nickname for me was “College Kid”, since for most of my tenure, I was the only volunteer who was still in college (aka I was the youngest). She would pat me on my head or pinch my cheeks as a form of teasing/endearment. She was really pretty so I let her get away with it, I guess. I had a bit of a crush on her, but I was never going to seriously act on it. She was probably at least 5-6 years older than me, I never asked. A few months after I graduated from college, I was eating dinner with a friend at a Red Robin, and I happened to see her. She walked over and greeted me with “Hey College Kid!” and I told her that calling me that would no longer be accurate and that she’d have to finally learn my name. She congratulated me for graduating college and made some small talk before she returned to her table. Not that I planned on asking her out, but all of a sudden, a cold ugly reality hit me. I started thinking about what kind of car I drove (and still drive to this day), how I was on the bottom of the career ladder, and things of that nature. Basically, I had an epiphany about what it meant to no longer be “College Kid”. I was on the bottom of the “working adult” totem pole and it was a sad and lonely place.
When I met Barrett, he was one of the few college students who attended our church. He wasn’t from around the area and he had just transferred from a community college. We didn’t have a college group or anything like that, so my friend was trying to meet up with him to make him feel more connected. My friend is 5-6 years older than me, which means that he’s 10-11 years older than Barrett. Not that the age gap really means anything. Barrett listens to classic rock. My friend doesn’t. So, in a decision that would be mutually beneficial to everyone involved, I told my friend that I would hang out with Barrett since I easily had a lot more in common with him. It was a good move.
So every couple of weeks, Barrett and I would grab dinner and we’d just chat about life. We were only 6 years apart, so I thought that I would seem less like of an authority figure to him, and more like a friend, and that happened to be the case for the most part. Barrett still thought I was old. In fact, he would regularly ask me things like “Did your generation have X-Men the Cartoon?” While it’s not necessarily silly to ask if a TV show was on 6 years prior (that’s a long time in TV land), it is kind of silly to pose the question as generational thing. He was also adamantly against the kids at church calling him “Uncle Barrett” because he was young and was, in his opinion, more of a cousin. (Charis and Allison now refer to him as “Uncle Bar-It”.) We were born in the same decade. We were only 6 years apart, and if we were in different generations, I was much more in tune with his generation than he was. After he came back from his hometown after the summer, he told me that he realized that I wasn’t that old, which is probably the nicest thing he’s ever told me. He would still bring up our “generational” differences, but mostly as an antagonistic joke. I would still have silly debates with him, (like how he swore that The Mighty Ducks 3 takes place during college, because he argued that a prep-school is a like a junior college) but for the most part, he tried not to frustrate me.
I definitely don’t look at hanging out with Barrett as a chore or as someone that I have to look after, and while at first glance, I definitely find his “generation” talk silly, I know I wasn’t that much different when I was about to graduate. The journey from 22 to 28 does seem like a long one, and there’s a lot of self-realization that I had to learn on the way. I’m pretty amazed that I’ve been out of high school for over 10 years and that I’ll be 30 in no time. ”Working Girl” seemed so unattainable to me and she was probably only 5-6 years older than me, but she just seemed that much older (not in a negative light – she dressed well and seemed to have her life more or less together). I wouldn’t say that I thought she was part of a different generation, but she was in a different life stage, one that I thought I’d never be a part of at 22.
It has been well documented in my writings that Chris and I have very similar tastes in music, film, and humor. It’s something that we’ve both acknowledged from the beginning of our friendship and over the past 11 years, if our tastes have evolved, they’ve continued to evolve down those shared paths. So when Rob Pope of The Get Up Kids (broken up at the time) joined Spoon a few years ago, I was excited, and I knew that Chris would be excited, while my girlfriend at the time couldn’t have cared less. I remember telling Chris the news and he was shocked. He couldn’t believe it and I knew that he wouldn’t be able to believe it. After finally accepting the news, he said “Wow. Going from The Get Up Kids to Spoon. Good career move.” I couldn’t agree more.
It’s pretty amazing that from the start, I’ve been able to predict Chris’ reactions. Even during a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors, I remember guessing his move. I recalled a Simpsons episode where Lisa and Bart were playing Rock-Paper-Scissors, and Lisa’s voice in her head said “Poor predictable Bart, always picks rock.” I substituted “Bart” for “Chris”, put down paper, and surely enough, Chris had picked rock. ”Good old rock, nothing beats rock.” was Bart’s thought, and it was probably Chris’ as well. I told him about that afterwards and he wasn’t mad at me at all. He actually had a good laugh about it. He couldn’t accuse me of cheating, I just knew better.
I’m not saying that we have a crazy telepathic connection or anything like that. We’re just really similar and that’s why I enjoy his friendship so much. I don’t have to cater to his interests, our interests are pretty much the same. The bands we like, the films we love, the TV shows we watch – all pretty similar. I don’t have to worry about making a joke that he won’t get. The only problem with this is that there are often times where Chris and I are the only two people in a room that are in on a joke or a reference. Sometimes it’s fine when it’s inside joke, but sometimes it’s awkward when it’s something really dark that we think is hilarious while the rest of the movie theater is shocked and horrified.
This happened when we went to the No Country for Old Men at the local movie theater in Irvine. It was in the middle of award’s season and Chris and I were really excited to see the latest offering from our favorite movie directors, The Coen Brothers. Since we were devoted fans of the Coens, we were used to seeing guys getting disposed of in wood chippers and a guy named Weezy Joe putting a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger when he mistakenly thinks it’s his inhaler. So when Josh Brolin is getting chased by a dog and he has to shoot it with a sawed off shotgun, Chris and I erupted with laughter. Unfortunately we were the only two people in the theater that thought it was funny. It’s not because Chris and I hate animals (I especially love dogs), we understood this as a “release point” for all the tension that had been building prior to this scene. It’s a staple of their filmmaking. Build up the tension, then release the tension with something really uncomfortable and darkly comical. Rinse and repeat.
We’ve tried to explain this scene throughout the years to many people and usually we get horrified looks. We’ll giggle about it and Chris will say “Come on! He shot the dog!”, like it’s somehow supposed to make people understand our point of view. Perhaps one day, people will revere us for the film aficionados that we are and we can teach a class on release points in modern film. I’m not holding my breath though. Chris is far from the perfect friend, and I’m sure many people could submit a resume on why they think they should be considered a better friend to me than him. I’m sure their points would be valid, their cases solid. Unfortunately for them, they probably can’t geek out about The Get Up Kids and the comedy of shooting dogs, and for some reason that gets weighted really heavily on my friend grading rubric. I’m not saying that all my best friends should be exactly like me, but it’s always nice to know that there’s someone out there that’s laughing at the same terrible thing as you.
A couple of years ago, I thought of a really cool Christmas gift for my nieces. Since they always love to watch The Simpsons with me, I would get them these limited edition Kid Robot vinyl Ralph Wiggum dolls. I’d bought them Kid Robot blind box toys before, but this one was easily bigger, better, and much cooler than any of the others. I called the Kid Robot store to reserve a couple (they were going fast), and then hopped in my car, drove through OC/LA traffic and made my way to West Hollywood during rush hour to get the best Christmas presents that Uncle Ryan could find.
Upon opening the boxes, my nieces were ecstatic. My sister and brother-in-law were impressed, and I was obviously happy that everyone was pleased. I could continue my reign as “best uncle ever” for at least another year because I was so thoughtful and creative. I really milked it as I told the dramatic story of weaving through rush hour traffic on Melrose Avenue and how I got the last two boxes that the store had. My brother-in-law later pulled me aside to disclose to me a secret: whatever Uncle Ryan buys the girls is automatically their favorite gift, so it doesn’t really matter what I buy them. It was very touching to hear this, but in a petty way, it was also disappointing. I understand that I achieved my goal in buying gifts that the nieces loved, but I also wanted them to understand why they were the best gifts EVER. I understand that they’re kids (or pre-teens, to be more specific), but I just want them to know how much I truly care.
I’ve given cool and thoughtful gifts to my friends as well. For just a few bucks extra, I added a joke gift of the Owl City “Fireflies 7″ to Sherlan’s already awesome Mastodon – Blood Mountain vinyl record birthday present. While Sherlan would’ve appreciated the Mastodon record by itself, the joke gift will make the gift an even fonder memory for years to come, even if he never listens to “Fireflies” for the rest of his life. With just a little extra thought, and an extra $7, we turned a great gift into a gift that will be remembered for the rest of his life.
I know that I’m a pretty thoughtful person and while I understand it’s a pretty good trait to have, sometimes I wish I could turn it off, and I’m not saying this because I’m bitter towards my nieces. I just understand that it’s kind of dangerous to be thoughtful towards all people and in all situations, because sometimes thoughtfulness can often be misinterpreted to be creepy or it can broadcast the wrong signals. Like I said, I wish there was a switch that I could turn off when I first meet someone so I could prevent this possible weird situation, but I have yet to find a solution. It’s definitely gotten better, but I’m not sure if that has to do with age or new anti-social tendencies.
My oldest sister claims that my thoughtfulness is part natural ability and part trained ability. I’m sure growing up with four older sisters definitely has attributed to my ability to be sensitive to the needs of people around me, but I don’t know if they can necessarily take any credit for “training” me. If there’s any visible legacy of my sisters “training” me, it’s the fact that I instinctively push down my finger nail cuticles every couple of weeks, and that I always put the toilet seat down. They also taught me to squeeze from the bottom of the toothpaste tube opposed from the middle, I later found out that this is not necessarily a “girl thing” but something that might be specific to our family.
I appreciate all the influence that my sisters tried to exert on me, and I hope they’re happy to know that at least some of it stuck. Whether I’m thoughtful because of my sisters is debatable. What is clear is that either way, it benefits them and their kids and even though it doesn’t inadvertently get me in trouble from time to time, I’m probably lucky that I don’t have to try to learn it now. Perhaps one day, I will find that switch and provide the world a perfect balance of thoughtfulness, but I guess until then, the world is going to be stuck with too much of a good thing.
Back in college, my friends and I became fascinated with Claim Jumper’s chocolate chip calzone, which is coincidentally probably the fattiest dessert known to man. It is exactly how it sounds: it’s like a pizza calzone, but instead of being filled with sauce and meat, it’s filled with white chocolate and milk chocolate chips, and it’s served a la mode, and for some unknown reason, they top it off with whipped cream. It’s also on par with the typical proportions at Claim Jumper, so it can feed 3-4 people pretty easily even though it says “for 2″. When my friend Tommy had the calzone for the first time, he didn’t describe the experience as “orgasmic”, but like “someone had an orgasm in my mouth”. Luckily, Tommy didn’t have any aspirations to become a food critic because his words that night would’ve definitely come back to haunt his career.
Tommy wasn’t the best with words, but he had a keen way of visualizing his satisfaction with food in a way that no food blog or Yelp! Quick Tip could put in the most eloquent of words. Tommy would just sit back in his chair, grin like a moron, and tap his fingers against his stomach. He wouldn’t say much, but you could tell he was pleased. It was a truly endearing scene and if you were the chef, you would be truly honored that your meal had moved him so.
I haven’t seen Tommy much since college, and this was all before the Yelp!/Twitter pics/ Food Truck craze, which I admit, I’m probably one of the worst offenders of, especially when I’m on vacation. For me, vacation is all about the food I’m going to eat, and thanks to Man Vs Food, No Reservations and the around the clock programming of The Food Network, I’ve been able to find exciting new things about places I’ve been to previously, like how the best ice cream in country is in St. Paul, Minnesota (Izzy’s! -> with the malt ball in the waffle cone). It’ll occasionally drive someone mad, like when I visit my sister in New York, but I live to eat, I don’t eat to live.
Sharing my food experiences through pictures on the net/twitter probably annoys a lot of people and I understand their disdain, but it’s started a lot of dialogue, often with people I’ve kind of lost touch with. It also helped Allison and Charis track my vacation to Chicago last year through their dad’s Twitter accounts. ”It looks like you ate a lot of good food in Chicago, Uncle Ryan!” Hopefully they just glazed over the tweet about sitting next to a transvestite on the bus on the way to Wrigley Field, but I digress. I’ll be honest, often the food I eat is the most exciting part of my life. If I had more going on, I’m sure I’d be tweeting about that.
Often, I wonder how restaurants survived before the food shows, review sites, and smart phones. I’m glad technology has made things easier for me to find what I’m looking for, so this is no way a complaint that technology has taken the excitement of trying somewhere new. I just feel bad for new start up restaurants. It feels like they’re under the gun, and there’s no room for error when they open up to make things right. It also seems that everyone is trying to create some sort of edge these days so there’s a lot of made up terminology being made to try to stand out. It reminds me a lot of independent music now. A lot of phrases like “hyper-literate” and “post-punk afro pop” are being used to describe new bands and instead of enticing me to listen to them, I almost shy away since I don’t know what to make of these newly branded terms. I’m all for trying new things, so eventually I give in, but all this information that gets thrown at me these days is sometimes tiresome. While I love having all the technology at my disposal, sometimes I wish for a simpler time, where instead of looking for fancy prose, I’d just watch Tommy lean back in his chair and tap his belly to know that we just had a great meal.
In elementary school, I was quite the overachiever. I maintained a 4.0 GPA, played little league baseball, took piano lessons, and was a part of student council. By the time we moved, I was also the captain of the school crossing guard (complete with sash and flag). Somehow in the midst of all the studying and extra-curricular activities, I tried to sell magazines, not as a job, but rather to get a bunch of crappy prizes from my school like a limo ride or these furry ugly things called “weebles”. I would go door to door and I’d bug my neighbors to buy subscriptions to help my school. My parents weren’t a huge fan of this, but they didn’t do too much to deter me (they also didn’t do too much from deterring my sisters from entering the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes or buying 15 cds for the price of 1 cent from the Columbia Record house – these were strange times). I didn’t rack up particularly huge amounts of sales, but one year in middle school, from what I believe was a clerical error, I was able to miss class to go to a concert in our school’s auditorium because apparently I was one of the top sellers at school. The only thing I remember from this concert was the performer was some pop-star wannabe with long hair, ripped jeans, a leather jacket, and a Beverly Hills 90210 t-shirt. It was a bad show, and I won’t count it as my first concert ever, since it was at school during school hours. I feel like that concert pretty much summed up my adolescence: ultimately disappointing with a lack of better options.
I stopped selling things door to door after that (not because of that) and even though I was tempted to sell knives before I went to college, I ultimately decided against it. I was done with the door to door sales phase of my life and felt pity upon those who would come by my door trying to sell me magazines, or drinking water, or newspapers. For a while, I was kind of a sucker for these people because I sympathized with how rough their work was, but after a while, I stopped answering the door for them. Not that there was a particularly unpleasant case that stands out, but it’s draining to listen to a sales pitch and then constantly rebuffing someone. It really goes against every fiber in my body to ignore someone when I’m actually home, but I’ve learned that it’s for my own good.
Ever since I moved last year, I haven’t had to deal with many door to door people. It’s probably because they need a gate code to get in and most of my neighbors are older so their kids are out of the house and not in the door to door trade. Of course, the gate won’t keep me immune from all door to door traffic, since there are other ways for people to pedal their wares. For instance, the girl scouts sell cookies at the grocery store, and in my case, I know a particular girl scout who calls me directly from her mom’s phone, which in no way am I implying is cheating. It’s just really awkward when she calls right after I’ve had dinner… and a couple of beers.
“Hey Uncle Ryan! It’s Charis.”
“Oh hey…”
“I’m selling snacks for girl scouts.”
I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t exactly at a point where I was totally comfortable talking to a ten year old child on the phone, so I tried to rush through the conversation as quickly as possible. I told her I’d buy some stuff, I asked her what she recommended and then promptly told her “I’ll take one of each” to keep the conversation as short and to the point as possible. I wasn’t slurring my speech or anything obvious like that so I’m pretty sure she had no idea that I wasn’t quite myself at the time, but I knew, so I felt guilty and my offer to pretty much buy anything was me trying to buy myself out of an awkward conversation. Luckily, my purchases came out to the affordable total of $19, which is completely fine with me.
I sold magazines during the daytime after school so looking back, I’m pretty sure all my sales were completed with my customers sober, but of course at that age, the thought wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind. It’s strange to be on the other side of a “door to door” sale and all the complexities that come with being an adult. Though, it’s probably weirder to think that I used to work really hard to gain so little. Merit badges would be one thing, but weebles are pretty worthless.
When I first moved to San Diego, I would wear shorts every day. I would scoff whenever anyone would say it was cold. I’d tell them that “back in Minnesota, it’s probably below freezing right now. This is nothing!” It was really obnoxious, but I was actually really fascinated with the weather, or the lack there of. I no longer had to deal with wind chill, snow, hail or tornadoes. At first, it felt like there were just two seasons: summer and a season that seemed slightly less nice than summer. Eventually, what was considered cold to the natives was cold to me, so I no longer go run out in the street in shorts when it’s raining just because it’s raining in December.
Even though my tolerance for cold weather disappeared, I still like to point out that I’m from Minnesota. It’s a good conversation starter even though at this point, it can cause a lot of confusion. ”Do your parents still live there?” ”Do you fly out there for the holidays?” I don’t mean to be confusing or obnoxious about it. I actually do have a lot of pride in growing up there, even though I was occasionally bullied and teased for being asian. As a kid and a sports fan, it was quite a rush to watch the Minnesota Twins win 2 World Series Championships in the span of 5 years. It was heartbreaking to find out that the Minnesota North Stars were going to move to Dallas. I remember a lot of things about growing up there without the aid of Wikipedia.
Since I went to elementary school in Minnesota, I never really learned about the geography and history of California. I know the state flag and motto and such, but I never learned much outside of the gold rush and that Los Angeles is a very big city. My first trip to Northern California wasn’t until I was in college, and the Bay Area is still kind of a mystery to me. I’ve felt the earth shake, and perhaps that’s all I really need to know about living in California. The food is great here, and that’s probably the main reason why I see myself staying here long term.
I remember complimenting my friend on her 3/4 sleeve coat and she told me that she can’t wear it when “it’s really cold”. I reminded her that in most of the country, she probably couldn’t even wear that when it’s “kind of cold”. It’s been raining a lot here lately, probably more than most winters. The weather’s been chilly to the point where wearing a semi-heavy coat isn’t enough. I’m probably as miserable in this weather as anyone. I no longer take joy in the cold or the rain. Sometimes Bruce teases me when I complain about the weather now, but I’m not ashamed. I’m no longer a kid, I avoid puddles now instead of jumping in them. I wouldn’t call this a rejection of my past, but an acceptance of who I am now, and I realize that it’s a fluid process and that it’s changing by the minute.
I probably held myself back for a while by reminiscing too much about the past when I first moved here, but it’s because it’s an important part of me and important to my journey as a person. There’s probably even a lot of stuff I don’t understand about it. I was probably scared that feeling cold meant I was changing for the worst, but probably the worst thing I could do is not change at all. I’m just trying to deal with the hand of cards that I’ve been dealt and while there’s been plenty of frustration, humiliation, and disappointment, I don’t regret a whole lot about it. I’m not going to be defined by the amount of cold I can take, but I’m going to be defined by the fact that my heart will still be warm and beating strong even while being covered in an avalanche of disappointment.
I’ve never been able to find my niche with New Years Eve. It sounds silly, but I don’t think I’ve ever spent it with the same people or doing the same thing. Sure, there’s a countdown at some point but that’s it (and on the west coast, it’s on a tape delay). I don’t even sing Auld Lang Syne or come up with crazy resolutions that I will forget about after a couple of months, I just go through the motions and that kind of makes me sad. Spending New Years alone wouldn’t be as depressing as say, spending Thanksgiving for Christmas alone, but it’s definitely a day you’re supposed to be with friends and like a lot of people in their 20s, I guess I have a revolving door of friends.
So a couple of years ago on New Years Eve, I decided that I’d make an honest effort to find some sort of tradition that I can carry with me in my single years. I can’t say I’ll be spending New Years Eve ’10 with the same people that I spent New Years Eve ’09 or 08 with but I think it’ll be safe to say that this year, like the others, I will be able to find someone to enjoy some scotch with.
I’ve started getting into scotch a couple of years ago and it’s been an exciting journey. I haven’t been drinking alone, I’ve been mostly drinking scotch with friends, or while chatting with a friend online. In 2008, I decided to cap 2008 with a bottle of Johnny Walker Green at a friend’s apartment. While perhaps not a “high roller” bottle of scotch, it was more “higher end” than anything I’d previously experienced and I found it fitting to end the year with something new, and since we ended 2008 with something new, 2009 ended up with something likewise, a bottle of Johnny Walker Gold. (*Disclaimer, we didn’t drink the entire bottle of Green that night nor did we drink the entire bottle of Gold. Scotch is not meant to be downed or shot.)
It would be nice to have some sort of tradition where the bottle of scotch would be upgraded every year to signify prosperity. Unfortunately that would be a tradition that might be too difficult to uphold. The price jump from a bottle of green to gold is about 20-30 dollars which is manageable, but but the jump from a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue is almost double the price of a bottle of Gold. I could always switch to a different label of Scotch, but that just opens up a whole new can of worms. Whatever direction I go, I’m probably going to hit a price point that I can’t justify, at least for the foreseeable future.
Traditions aren’t necessarily supposed to be easy, so it’ll be interesting to see how much longer I can keep this tradition for, and if I have to say “goodbye” to this one, hopefully I will fine a new and better tradition that I can try carry on for the rest of my life. Either way, I just hope that I’ve found a group of friends that I’ll be spending New Years Eve with for many more years to come, because as my 20s start to wind down, finding that special group of people seems to be like the one thing that I’ve been missing all along.
We went to a small Korean Church in Minnesota. According to Bruce, this was one of two Korean churches in the state (Google says there now at least 8). As you might expect in the state of Minnesota, our Korean church didn’t have the largest congregation, but I would say it’s safe to estimate that we did have at least a couple hundred people, children included. A decent percentage of that population consisted of my family (8 people, including my grandmother), my aunt’s family (herself, my uncle, and three kids), and Bruce’s family (his mom, dad, him and his 2 brothers – no relation, but close enough). So while we probably couldn’t stage a coup de etat of the church on our own, we were pretty visible and probably had a decent amount of influence at the church. My sisters seem to be pretty involved during their high school years, but they pretty much stopped going to our church, or any church after they graduated from high school.
Since my sisters have stopped going to church for years now, it is always very entertaining to see how uncomfortable they are when they’re home for the holidays and my parents beg them to go to church. I understand that part of their discomfort stems from my parents introducing them to a bunch of people that my sisters don’t know (they had all moved out and stopped going to church before my parents and I moved to San diego), and it probably doesn’t help the matter that I usually don’t go with (to deflect attention, I suppose). I know it probably sounds ironic that I attend church regularly but I sit out Christmas service at my parents’ church, but I really can do without my parents’ friends telling me how much weight I’ve gained since high school and how chubby my face has gotten (complete with visual illustration). So my sisters go, they sit through it, they meet some people that they barely remember / never met before, and head home to ask my why I’m not forced to go (and that everyone asks about me so my parents have to spin a lie about why I’m not there).
The meals at Christmas time are also really amusing because not only have my sisters stopped going to church, but they’ve also stopped praying on a regular basis so when my dad asks someone to pray for the entire table, there’s a lot of awkward silence and finger pointing. My sisters tend to volunteer me every time this happens, and I’m never especially happy to be handed this “honorable” duty. As I’ve gotten older, and have become more comfortable with interacting with my much older sisters (between 8-15 years older), I’ve tried to turn the tables on them when they’ve forced me to pray out loud in front of the whole family. I can’t say that it’s stopped them from pressuring me, but at least I feel like I do achieve a small victory now in the process.
When my sisters force me to pray, I try to make the most uncomfortable scene that I can. I tend to stand up, I raise my hands over everyone, and I try to speak like a charismatic tele-evangelist. I pray for my sisters’ disobedient sinful souls, and I try to draw the prayer out for as long as I can. If I can stay in character, I’ll try to perform an exorcism, but usually there’s a lot of laughing at that point. I’m sure my christian friends don’t approve of this method. They’d probably recommend that I take the prayer seriously so I may help my sisters remember the importance and power of prayer, and I think that is a valid argument, but I’m just not wired that way, and humiliating my sisters is just so irresistible.
A few months ago, my sister was in town, and since I was her ride to the airport, she had to go to church with me, since I had to play guitar that day. It actually wasn’t too uncomfortable for her to be there. I’m guessing it probably helped that everyone in my church speaks English and no one wears a suit. Whatever the reason, I’m glad she didn’t accuse me of forcing her to go and that she didn’t complain about the service afterwards. I’m to get all my family back in to church so we can return to old days but in a way it was some sort of a small victory for me. I’m in no way trying to be the family evangelist, but it would be nice if we could finally get to a place where my sisters were finally comfortable with going to church with my parents once a year and I wasn’t forced to pray at every family dinner.
I only remember one of my substitute teachers from high school and I draw the ire of my teacher friends whenever I reminisce about her in front of them. They’re not annoyed about her faux British accent or the fact that she wore a Looney Toons sweatshirt every day she subbed at our school, they’re annoyed by the fact that she would placate us by turning on the Food Network and letting us watch Emeril Live with her instead of actually trying to teach us from a lesson plan. Back in high school, this was the best thing ever, and as a student, I never really considered how annoyed my teachers might be when they came back and found out that we learned more about jerk chicken than anything else when we had our substitute teacher. I didn’t know any better, I just went with the flow, and honestly I didn’t care.
High school also saw the release of one of my favorite albums of all time, Weezer’s Pinkerton. I immediately loved it on the first listen. The music was loud, sloppy, and goofy, but in a more sophisticated and thoughtful way than a blink 182 album. To me, it sounded like Weezer. (even though the Blue Album is super polished and not sloppy at all) I was really surprised to see that it wasn’t doing well critically or commercially and I was really surprised to find out that some publications and DJs really hated it (yes, not just Rolling Stone‘s reader’s poll). I wasn’t the most cerebral kid (and I’m not particularly cerebral now), so perhaps I didn’t care that the lyrics were emotionally raw, kind of creepy, and really immature, since it was released when I was 14, I was also kind of creepy, and really immature. I thought a song like “Tired of Sex” was clever because it sort of went against the grain of being a rock star. I didn’t know that it would become an album with a cultish following, but I totally admit that I’m one of the members.
In college, we had to read Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and when I saw it on the syllabus, I was really excited since Pinkerton‘s concept is loosely based on it. I saw some of the connections while reading it, but I wouldn’t say that it made me enjoy Pinkerton more or less. It was what it was. I saw Weezer in concert later that year, I bought their next album on the day it was released, and then I eventually stopped caring about the band until they did a re-release deluxe edition of Pinkerton.
I’ve read a lot of press clippings about the re-release and how it was probably hated when it originally came out because it was an album being looked at through the lens of adult reviewers and they probably frowned upon the unfiltered sexual frustration of the lyrics. Back in 1996, this was apparently frowned upon. That sounds so weird to me. I didn’t find anything particularly jarring about it as 14 year old. It was fun loud rock music and the lyrics were kind of goofy. Upon re-listening to it as a 28 year old adult, I can kind of see how this album could make reviewers back in the 90s uncomfortable. It’s all about the context.
As a 14 year old, hearing a 25 year old vent about sexual frustration seemed normal – it was almost empathetic, and hearing a 25 year old sing about writing love letters with a 18 year old school girl in Japan seemed romantic, but now hearing these songs again as a 28 year make me feel a bit differently about it (not enough to change my view – I still love this album). Obviously, at 14, I could only understand so much about it and at 28 I understand so much more. Luckily, I heard it when I was younger so now when I look at it, I view the creepiness of it all as a piece of art. There was nothing criminal about it, it’s just kind of tasteless at times, and that’s okay.
It’s just a reminder that how I view things change with age and perspective. I can now understand why Pinkerton was derided back then, I can admit that Kevin Smith’s films no longer have the same impact on me as they did in college, and now I realize that my favorite substitute teacher in high school pretty much embodies all the traits of a bad sub, but the choice is still mine of how I want to remember these things. I can still view Pinkerton as one of my favorite albums of all time, I can say that the View Askew universe has had an impact on my humor, and I can still love that sub who let us watch Food Network all those days, even though I know she would drive my friends nuts.
I used to fall off my bike a lot as a kid, so I was no stranger to scrapes and bruises. Usually, I’d fall, get up, and walk my bike home, and then my parents would freak out and clean up the scrapes with rubbing alcohol (to say it was painful is an understatement). I wouldn’t say that I ever got used to it, but there’s only one time where I can vividly remember how painful the fall was. I was riding around the block, and somehow when I fell off my bike, my bike landed on top of me. I think because of that, I freaked out and just laid on the street crying. Luckily for me, a neighbor ended up rushing out of their house with bandages and disinfectant. He helped clean my scrapes and I was finally able to get up and walk my bike back home. I had never met this neighbor before and I don’t think I ever really saw him again, but this act of kindness didn’t really surprise me. We were a tightly knit community. I don’t think anyone ever came over to ask for some sugar, but it wouldn’t be a stretch. It was nice.
I realize that things are different now. If a man who I’d never met before rushed out of their house to tend to my wounds, he wouldn’t be referred to as a “neighbor”, but as a “stranger”. While his intentions were clearly noble, they would now be looked at with skepticism, questioning whether he might be up to something more elaborate and sinister. The world has clearly become much more cynical over the past 20 years and it’s not without just cause. While I would love to say that the Minnesota neighborhood I grew up in is still a wonderful utopia, it’s not, in fact we were there when that image was shattered. Even though my parents won’t admit it, I think it’s the reason that we left.
Ever since kindergarten, I typically walked to school. Obviously, on days where the weather was bad, I would get a ride, but for the most part, I walked. I even walked home in a blizzard once, since the distance between the school and our house was so short. It was convenient for both my parents and my sisters since their schedules didn’t have to be tied to my school schedule and this was common for lots of other families as well. It was a no brainer for families in our neighborhood, we felt safe.
Then something terrible happened. Something tragically terrible.
We lost one of our kids, but not by a freak car accident, not by an accidental fall into a lake, but by murder. She was walking home from the Junior High School when it happened. That school was a bit farther then where the elementary school was, but I actually biked through that area pretty often to get to my friend’s house. I didn’t know the girl since she was a few years older but I did know that she lived in our neighborhood. Her death sent shock waves throughout our community.
It didn’t feel safe anymore, it didn’t feel like home. Walking to school was no longer an option. As a kid, I felt sad about the situation, but I couldn’t exactly comprehend how it affected the parents and other families of the community, whether they knew her family or not. It changed how we all lived. The neighbors were all still friendly with each other and the kids all felt safe running around in our yards, but I think we all started getting more rides to my friend’s houses even if they were in manageable walking/biking distances. We moved a year later, and my parents gave me plenty of different reason for why we were moving, but none of them involved this girl, which I guess is for the best. It’s probably not a good idea to have a kid walking into a new school telling all his new classmates that he moved because someone kid in his neighborhood was tragically taken away from their family.
I didn’t get to visit my old stomping grounds until 10 years later and it wasn’t a pretty sight. I’m not trying to imply that this murder sent this suburb on a downward spiral, but I can’t see how this tragedy doesn’t still loom over that neighborhood. I didn’t know the girl or her family, or exactly which house was theirs, but I knew approximately where on the street they lived, and I think that’s what spooks me the most about all of this. That man who had rushed out of his house to help this random kid a couple of years earlier could very well have been the girl’s dad., that could’ve very well been their house. It pains me to think that one of the kindest people of my childhood, might’ve been the person who suffered the greatest tragedy.
(This references this story, which referenced this earlier story – call it a trilogy, if you will)
While I’ve written 2 stories about the impact that Chloe has had on my life, I must be honest, I’ve never actually had a conversation with the kid. That’s not to say that I’ve never met her or talked to her (she’s given me plenty of high fives). I distinctly remember the first time, I interacted with Chloe: I was walking back in to church while she was leaving with her dad, I waved to her and said “Bye Chloe.”, she returned the wave and did sort of a double take. I don’t think she really knew who I was (in fictional or non-fictional sense), but at the same time, waved to me regardless because I seemed familiar. I wasn’t a stranger even though I actually was. This added to the crazy future-child mythology.
I knew that if I ever wanted to read these stories in front of audience (and especially to an audience of people who might not know who Chloe is), I knew that I would need some visual assistance, which would mean I would need to talk to her parents, which upon a cursory glance, doesn’t seem like a big deal, but under much more thought, it is actually a very delicate situation. I didn’t know them very well and since they didn’t live in the area anymore, I could understand if they found it a bit odd that I wanted to visit them and take pictures with their child, so when I wrote them an e-mail about the idea, I actually was very nervous about their response. Fortunately they knew who I was, and eventually the shoot happened. When we got there, I was scared that she wouldn’t cooperate since I assumed she didn’t really remember me, but she was fine, and for the first time ever, we actually talked.
Not to get too caught up in my only fake story, but my conversation with Chloe had a different feel than the conversations I’ve had with other kids. I talk to Charis and Allison all the time (they’re both older than Chloe), and typically they talk about typical “kid” things (their friends, their favorite tv shows, etc). Not to say that Chloe is more mature than they are, but in my short time with her, Chloe decided she wanted to jump straight to deeper matters. When she questioned why I felt like I needed to change my shirt in private when I was already wearing an undershirt, I knew that we wouldn’t be talking about Spongebob Squarepants that day. She didn’t want to ask me what my favorite color was or what I do for a living, I think she wanted to know if I was ready to be a real father.
While she didn’t talk to me about being a dad specifically, she asked me a lot of questions that made me feel I was being prepped to be a parent. ”Do you love us?” (referring to her and her brother, and then asking me “Why? You’re not in our family.” after I replied “yes”) “Do you love your wife?” and “Are you sad that you aren’t married yet?”, (all which came within the first 5 minutes of our shoot) could easily be substituted with “Do you love us” (your kids), “Do you love Mommy?” and “Are you happy that you married Mommy?” She then proceeded to talk to me about how much she missed living in Fullerton and how she’s had difficulty fitting in to her new neighborhood, school, and church. At 6, she was articulating a lot of the same things that I felt when we left Minneapolis at the age of 11, so our frank and honest conversation had a hint of melancholy hovering over us.
We went outside for a little while and she taught me some games, all of which I was either terrible at, or she was making up as the games went along. We went back inside and finished up our shoot of mostly candid photos. She asked me if I knew how to write in cursive and then asked me to write something, so I wrote her a letter thanking her for helping me out and that she was so much fun to work with. I told her that she could read it when she’s older so she could remember how helpful she was to her Uncle Ryan, but she told me to keep it. I asked her why, and she told me that she “wanted [me] to keep it so [I] would remember [her] forever.” Obviously, I wasn’t going to forget her, but I also wasn’t going to argue with a 6 year old about keeping a piece of paper.
The shoot was over, I said my good byes and gave her and her brother a hug. I told them I’d visit them again soon. She told me she had a lot of fun. I sat in the car exhausted, not just because we had been running around for two hours, but also because of the emotional weight of what we had talked about that day. She wanted me to reach a little deeper than I was anticipating, and while I wouldn’t say I found that unwelcome, it was definitely a little jarring that a 6 year old could make me search my soul. While I joke about the impact she’s had on me (ruining my online dating life), this time it wasn’t a joke, it was real. She did what many adults haven’t been able to do: she made me question why emotionally I’m always hiding in private, even when I’m not in danger of being naked.
I know a lot of people who won’t date someone that has the same name as one their exes. It sounds kind of silly and superstitious but I totally understand. I could get on my soap box and talk about how everyone is different regardless of their name and they should all be given a chance and that you shouldn’t give someone the power to ruin certain names for you, but I actually feel the same way. I don’t want to date anyone that’s shared a name with one of my exes. I’m not saying there will never be an exception to the rule, but at this point, that would be my preference. Though, one thing I’m not willing to budge on is dating someone that has the same name as one of my sisters.
Since we are a Korean American family, that means we each have two names: a Korean name and an English name, and since I have 4 sisters, that means that there are 8 names, not just 4, that I will not date. Being in America, I typically don’t need to worry about meeting girls with the same Korean names as my sisters. It’s happened once, and while it may seem silly that I held that against her, it only got weirder from there.
I met this girl during my sophomore year of college. She was a couple of years older than me and we started to hang out pretty regularly. At one point, a lot of people were asking if we were dating, so inevitably we had to have that super awkward conversation (also known as the DTR). I wasn’t sure how she felt, but she asked me if that’s what I wanted. At the time, I didn’t want it because I was interested in another girl, one that would eventually rip out my heart and stomp all over it, but it wasn’t because this girl’s name was my sister’s Korean name (to protect this girl, I’m not going to disclose any names).
Of course, she could’ve argued that since she preferred a shortened version of the name, I wouldn’t need to think about the fact that she shared her name with my sister. This is actually not a valid argument, because it actually makes things more bizarre, but to explain this, I should probably give some backstory on Korean names. Korean first names are two syllables, and typically families will name their children with a shared element, so either the first part of the name is the same for all the kids or the second part is the same. In my family, my sisters and I all share the first part of our names. So, unfortunately for this girl, the “short” name she uses, is that same shared part, and to make matters exponentially worse, if you combine this short name with her last name (like my name is “nickname last name”), it becomes my actual Korean name. So not only does she actually share a name with my sister, she also kind of shares my name as well. This didn’t factor into my decision into not wanting to be with her at the time and since I’ve seen a June Kim date a Joon Kim, it’s not like this hasn’t been done before.
Still, this is really strange to think about, and this seems to be something only Korean (or Asian) Americans have to worry about. I used to have issues with the idea of dating someone that was like me, probably because of self-esteem issues. It’s something that I’ve only become comfortable with recently, as I’ve finally become more comfortable in my own skin. Of course I realize that this is all a coincidence, but maybe I’m just not ready to date someone that shares my name. Maybe one day I will be, but until that day comes, I think I’m going to try to be more open when I meet girls that share a common name with my exes. It’s still not my preference, but it sure seems like a better option that dating myself.
When I go to visit my parents in San Diego, I usually stay for less than 24 hours. I’ll arrive Friday night or Saturday morning and head back to Orange County Saturday night. If I stay until Sunday, I’ll have to argue about why I’m not going to church with my parents, which seems odd since I attend church regularly in Fullerton. So why will I go to one church and not the other? The answer on the surface is simple: I don’t want to wear a suit.
My parents go to a 0 generation Korean church (at least that’s what my friend calls it). The main service is in Korean, the hymns, the readings, the sermon, everything is in Korean. There’s also a smaller English service and the youth group is in English as well, but these are ancillary things. The ethnocentricity of the church doesn’t really bother me, but since it’s a 0 generation church, it’s definitely old fashioned, hence my father demanding I wear a suit if I’m to go now that I’m “grown up”.
The suit is definitely an issue for me, but it’s more of what the suit represents: image. I’m well liked by the parents at this church and I’m doing pretty well for myself, but my parents want these other parents to see that I’m doing well or at least that I dress like I’m an adult who knows what “doing well” is. It’s something I try not to blame on my parents, it’s very generational, but like I said, it’s not the suit that keeps me away.
There was a kid, we’ll call him Joel. He’s 4 years younger than me and I, for a lack of a better word, mentored him. He wanted to learn how to play guitar for the youth group worship team so for the majority of my senior year of high school, we’d hang out, play guitar, and I’d beat his ego down. He was a bright kid, who had just tested into a gifted program at school. This coupled with him joining this worship team at “such a young age” (the words of others, not mine) was a recipe for disaster, but for some reason I was the only person who could see it coming. I referred to him as my Anakin Skywalker and I knew that he definitely had the ability to bring things to the dark side.
I went to college and came back to see my parents every month and a half or so, and eventually I started to go back to Irvine, on Saturdays, much like I do now. This church was no longer part of my life, but I tried to check up on Joel every now and then. During my 4th year of college, I actually came down to San Diego every weekend because my Mom was in Korea and I figured my Dad could use some company. The first weekend I was there, I decided to see how Joel was doing, and there I saw Darth Vader destroying everything in his path.
Joel started to date this girl from the youth group. I’ve known them both for a very long time so I didn’t really think too much of it. The families didn’t like each other very much but this wasn’t a Romeo and Juliet generational feud. They didn’t like their kid dating the other families’ kid, and Joel decided to throw a tanker of gasoline onto the fire. Joel disclosed to me that he thought his girlfriend was pregnant, and he was turning to me for advice. Since I’m not well versed on after school specials, I decided to ask some questions.
I skipped the obligatory “Don’t you know premarital sex is forbidden by the Bible?” question but still found myself really disappointed with his answers even though I was trying to not be judgmental about the situation.
“‘How many times did you have unprotected sex?”
“Three.”
“Why didn’t you ever use protection?”
“I figured she could always get an abortion.”
I don’t want to open up a pro-choice/pro-life debate. I think either side will agree that these answers are ignorant, despicable, and absolutely appalling. For some reason, I didn’t punch him in the face and leave, I listened to him drone on about how he loved her and how his parents didn’t understand and blah blah blah blah blah. I heard him out and he asked me what he should do. I told him that he’d been really irresponsible about everything. I then proceeded to tell him to stop pissing everyone off and that he had done enough damage. He needed to graduate from high school (4 months away) and then move/ let his parents kick him out of the house and if he wanted to be with the girl and live happily ever after, but the key was to lay low until then.
I guess he wasn’t expecting this. I guess he was expecting me to tell him that he was right and that everyone should leave them alone since they were in love. The next day I was supposed to have lunch with him but he didn’t pick up his cell phone. I darted over to her apartment and found him there, trying to convince her to pack up her things and run away with him. I couldn’t put up with him anymore. He lied to me and I realized he didn’t want my advice, he wanted a “yes man”. I saw him a week later, he told me she wasn’t actually pregnant, and acted like all was well. That was the last time we spoke. I ran into his dad a week later at church. His dad didn’t know I knew what I knew about his and he openly mocked me for wanting to be “a movie producer”. Now I was completely fine cutting ties with this family and this church.
Eventually the truth came out about the kids and the pregnancy scare. My mom told me to stop talking to those kids, and I told her I was way ahead of her, but that’s the unfortunate thing about this. The church was not a place where these families could find support in their time of crisis, it was a place that shunned them and forced them to leave in disgrace. I found out later that Joel’s relationship with the girl ended because he couldn’t control his drinking. My relationship with this church ended because I was the only one trying to save Joel from himself.
When I was a kid, I abhorred my parents’ comparisons to my best friend. They would ask me why I couldn’t be better behaved like him (for the record: he was just quiet). It would drive me up the wall, since, I wasn’t a particularly rowdy kid. Of course, when I would compare myself to someone who was much worse than me, my parents would tell me “don’t compare”. I hated the double standard and even as a kid, I thought it was unfair that my parents were comparing me with a kid that was going to private school (not a dig at Bruce, just the facts) when I was going to a public school. Oddly enough, Bruce felt like he was a total brat as a kid compared to me, citing how he always demanded that we go and get “Happy Meals with a toy” whenever he was over at our house. This nugget of shame wasn’t revealed me to me until recently (I don’t even remember this happy meal nonsense), so basically we’ve been harboring all this comparison related shame for years.
Of course, the comparisons didn’t end when we were kids and they didn’t stop at our parents. Whenever he’s in town to visit me, or when I’m in town to visit him, our collective groups of friends will come up with their own judgments. Sometimes the comparisons are bland (“you guys seem a lot alike!”) and sometimes they’re downright hilarious. (“At first, I thought you were the mean one because you’re really sarcastic and Bruce is really quiet, but then I realized you’re the nice one and Bruce is the jerk.”) Since we’ve been friends for so long, we’re so comfortable in our skin regarding our friendship, any sort of judgement barely affects us. Of course, not all my friendships have 25+ years of security that I can lean on.
I went to a concert with my friend Paul and a few of his friends. I’ve known Paul since my sophomore year of college and I think we’d both agree that we’ve become good friends, but for some reason he told his friends beforehand that when he first met me, he thought I was weird and a bad person because I had blue hair and listened to rock music. It’s true that Paul felt that way when he first met me and was my next door neighbor in the dorms, but it seemed peculiar to me that this was the impression that he wanted to impart on his friends. Obviously, Paul thought it was funny but for me, it was weird to have to rehash the old days where I had blue hair for a month to a bunch of conservative Korean christians that I had never met before (I might’ve had a class in college with one of them). I think Paul wanted to warn them that I was a little eccentric, but I think I was pretty well behaved that night, and I eventually won them over by dishing out some entertaining stories about Paul, like when I was unemployed and he told me to go work at The Games Workshop (for minimum wage) primarily so I could get him discounts on board games and Warhammer figurines.
Misguided selfish schemes and judgmental first impressions aside, Paul’s done a lot of good things in my life. From taking me to the hospital in college when my stress headaches were getting bad, to telling me about the church that I currently attend, he’s had a pretty major impact on me. I’m not sure if he would say that I’ve returned the favor as far as things I’ve said to him or done for him, but as I’ve learned with Bruce, there’s a good chance that he probably feels the same way to some extent. No one would ever say that Paul and I are alike (except for our common affinity for the Venture Brothers), but we’ve managed to hash out a pretty worthwhile friendship since he got over the fact that I am not inherently evil, or at least not any more evil than my fellow man. While it would be nice to hear that his friends think that he’s the mean one even though I’m the sarcastic one, it’s probably smart not to compare this friendship to any of my others. I just know that even though there’s plenty of teasing in this one (and there always will be), especially the fact that he still loves to play D&D, there’s a lot of substance beneath the surface of my once blue hair and secular music.
In college, I was asked to make a short video for my church’s Revolution campaign. During the campaign, blown up pictures of revolutionaries such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi were plastered all over the place, so when I was asked to pitch an idea for my short film, I decided to go down a much more lighthearted path. I even pitched my idea via a sketch that I had drawn up on a napkin, but I was told to re-draw it on a piece of paper. They finally approved my idea and I gathered up a handful of the kids from the church and shot my “revolutionary” video. It wasn’t the most original concept; a girl disguising herself as a boy after being shunned and then thoroughly beating all the boys at sports, and then being accepted after revealing her true self. Even though it is a bit of a cliché premise, I felt like I was able to add some of my own flourishes bia dialogue by having the boys berate the girl with such terrible lines as “Why do you women want everything? We already gave you the right to vote!” and “Why don’t you go to the kitchen and make me a sandwich?” The video did its job, people laughed, and I was able to show that kids can be revolutionaries in the own communities without having to be martyrs.
Usually when I make a video, someone will ask me whether the video’s idea comes from some event from my past. Sometimes these questions gets a little annoying (“did you ever fall in love with a mute girl?”), but it comes with the territory. With 4 older sisters, I was never a boy that thought girls had cooties, and I never had a problem with girls wanting to play sports with the boys at recess (not a lot of girls cared to anyways). We only had one girl who would consistently play sports with us during recess, and there was never any resistance to her participation. It wasn’t because all the boys had older sisters or because they were all brought up to respect girls as their equals, it was because this girl was better at sports than most of the boys. Whether it be soccer, kickball, (touch) football or what have you, Krissy was always one of the first kids picked, if she wasn’t forced to be a captain. She was just that good, and there was no shame in this particular girl being faster or better coordinated than any of the boys. (She was also pretty good at hockey, but we didn’t play that at recess.)
I wouldn’t say that Krissy and I were good friends, but I think we were more than civil. I remember one instance where my mom agreed to be a chaperone for one of our class field trips and how Krissy (among other kids) wanted to be in my group, so I think our friendship at least extended beyond the playground. When the bell rang and recess started, we were just competitors. If we were on the same team, great. If we were on opposite sides, our friendship would have to be put aside. She was fierce, but I don’t think she was obnoxiously cocky. She wasn’t a ball hog, but she knew when she had her shot. She never begged for different treatment for being a girl and she never complained when things got a little physical. No one felt emasculated when she scored or deked you out. No one was ever teased that they were beat by “the girl”.
After I moved to California, Krissy and I didn’t keep in touch, but because of her success in sports, I’ve been able to keep track of her accomplishments. From the appearance in the Little League World Series, to medaling in the 2002 and 2006 Winter Olympics, it’s been nice to see my friend find such great success (she even has a wikipedia page!). Hopefully through the exposure that she’s received through the Olympics, she’s inspired girls across the country to pursue their athletic dreams, and hopefully she’s inspired some boys as well, since in the rare instances that I play pickup sports, I’ll still hear guys talk about how they don’t like to play with girls; they complain about giving them special treatment, and the stigma of being beaten by a girl. Obviously, these guys didn’t grow up with Krissy because if they had, they would realize that there’s no shame in being beaten by a girl, whether an Olympic calibre athlete or not. I’m not saying that video I made for church was an account about growing up with Krissy, but look back, I definitely think my female protagonist in the video definitely mirros her spirit. They both started out just wanting to have fun and ended up blazing a trail for others to follow.
In elementary school, I was a pretty big New Kids on the Block fan. I wasn’t the only one in my family that enjoyed their music. I know that at least one of my sisters have seen NKOTB in concert (pre-reunion). Even though my sister Ami enjoyed them, she also pushed for me to listen to “better” music, so at the age of 10, I was making mixtapes featuring The Replacements, Jane’s Addiction, and late 80s era REM. A few years later, Ami started interning at a record label and she started sending me droves of free music. By the age of 13, New Kids on the Block had been replaced with Nirvana (and then Foo Fighters), Beck, and Weezer. Eventually I started venturing out and finding music on my own, but I was already heading down a course that my sister had more or less charted.
Not only did my sister try to impart good musical taste on me, but she also tried to teach me to be driven. While I marveled at all the cool stuff she got while interning and working at record labels, she would explain to me at how unglamorous her jobs were. The perks were nice, but the pay was lousy. It was a lot of paperwork and phone calls. Still, to my friends and I, she was setting the bar high. I didn’t necessarily want to be her, but I could feel myself getting buried alive in her shadow. At times this annoyed her, at other times she would lecture me about how hard she would work and that I would need to do the same.
She’s 8 years older than me, so when I started high school, she was finished with college. So in a way, she’s always made my life kind of miserable by telling me how insecure and petty my peers in my life stage (at least high school and college) were, which while true, has gotten me pretty jaded. Her intentions have been noble, but sometimes a 14-21 year old can’t process and act on wise advice properly. Obviously, she was looking out for me and was trying to keep me from unnecessary drama, but I didn’t understand that her advice wasn’t supposed to make me cynical towards everyone. It also really sucks when you’re an adolescent teen uncomfortable in your own skin and your older sister tells you “stop talking about yourself so much. No one’s going to like you.”
Eventually, I started finding my own lane in life and every now and then, I feel like that causes tension with her. She still pushes me to succeed and will give me her unsolicited opinion. Occasionally I lose sight of her noble intentions and lash back at her. I’ve wondered if there will ever be a time where she’ll be happy with what I’ve accomplished or who I’ve become, since I’ll always be her little brother. My lack of urgency drives her nuts when I go visit her in New York. I would think that she’d be grateful that I’m not bugging her to take me to places, but it’s the opposite with her. She wants to know why I don’t know where I want to go each day.
We haven’t hit too many rocky stages in our sibling relationship though she always likes to remind me of the story about how I caused her to get an ear infection when I was a kid. Sometimes, I need some space from all the pushing. Of course I know that with all the tough love and constructive criticism, I know that there’s plenty of caring in there too. The last time I was in New York, she was out of town but she let me stay at her place. She mailed me a set of keys, and sent me a list of places to go eat, and a list of food that she had stocked the fridge with for me. So even though I didn’t get to see my sister, she was there, her presence visible during many of the activities and meals of the week and in a totally positive light. Obviously, there were no talks about trying to push me harder to not be satisfied with my current state or talks about how I’m consistently trying to get out of her shadow, but perhaps she knew that on this trip that I didn’t need any of those talks. Perhaps, I just needed to see that she’s going to be there for me even when she can’t be there physically, and maybe that’s exactly what I need right now as I’ve learned to push myself out of her shadow without her.
The previous time I was in New York, I was visiting Bruce for his birthday. I was also detoxing from a relationship, picking up the pieces of my life scattered all over the Northern and Southern California. My life had changed a lot since the breakup: I found a new job, a new group of friends, and I was looking for a way to reclaim the identity that was more or less being compromised while trying to make someone happy that I wasn’t designed to make happy. I wasn’t necessarily looking to find that identity in New York, but more or less it found me.
I wasn’t planning ont doing a whole lot of shopping in New York but Bruce really wanted to take me out to some shops that he thought I’d really like. So we made our way to SoHo and we made our way into the Kid Robot and Bathing Ape stores, and I promptly dropped a large amount of cash on a t-shirt and a hoodie. All the colors and the designs just jumped out at me and I was immediately addicted. Even though I wasn’t known for having a lot of nice clothes at the time, I decided right than and there that I was going to start caring more about how I looked. Not in an attempt to be vain, but in an attempt to showcase my sense of style.
I definitely feel like this move was spurred by the lack of self I was feeling after the breakup. If I was in a better situation in my life, I probably wouldn’t have needed the void filled by something so flashy and expensive, but I don’t regret this part of my journey at all. Besides, if I had never fallen in love with these threads, there would never be a Technicolor Wardrobe. Of course, now that I’m in a better place and now that priorities have shifted, I’m at sort of a crossroads whether I want to sacrifice investing in my fashion sense for other pursuits in life. Perhaps it’s time to stop wearing “children’s clothes” (friendly jab), and grow up with more practical clothing.
This decision has been aided by the close of the Bathing Ape store in Los Angeles. I no longer have a store in a semi-convenient area and buying clothes through their website is limited and pricey. This is why I needed to visit the Bathing Ape New York store on my most recent visit. I needed one last look at the clothing line that had helped me rediscover my swagger and perhaps buy my last article of clothing from there. I wanted to say “goodbye”, perhaps not forever, but at least for the time being.
I had only brought a few shirts for my trip, knowing that Bruce would take me shopping and I would probably buy shirts for the rest of my trip. We hit up a couple of stores before making our inevitable and bittersweet stop at Bathing Ape. I was wearing my Bathing Ape Kid Cudi t-shirt because it’s 1) one of my favorite t-shirts and 2) the most recent Bathing Ape t-shirt that I had purchased and I wanted to show it off to Bruce. We walked in to the store, and before I could even start checking out the clothing selection, a man walked by me and told me that he really liked my shirt. I told him “thanks”, and as he walked past me, a bunch of high school kids in the store started to get really excited. I looked back at the man and realized that the man who had commented on my shirt was Kid Cudi himself. I was wearing my Bathing Ape Kid Cudi shirt while standing in the Bathing Ape store with Kid Cudi. It was a surreal experience to say the least.
As the workers at the store ushered everyone out, for some reason, Bruce and I were allowed to stay. I looked around and eventually Bruce and I were able to take some photos with Kid Cudi, who was really nice to us. I finally picked out a t-shirt for myself and a couple of small things for Allison and Charis for their “thank you” gifts for the upcoming show and headed out. We went to a few stores after that, both of us dumbfounded by what had just happened. We had no prior knowledge of Kid Cudi’s whereabouts that day and I didn’t wear that shirt with any expectation that I was going to meet him that day. Everything had just lined up perfectly and we were obviously in high spirits because of it.
Whether or not this is the end of the Bathing Ape era for me, it has obviously ended on a high note. I might look back on some of my shirts and wonder why I even liked some of them or I might wonder how I allowed myself to spend what I spent on them, but I will never regret this era in my life. This was meant to happen and if it doesn’t have a major positive effect on my life, I feel that it at least help set up whatever that next stage is. I won’t go as far as to say that meeting and shopping with Kid Cudi changed my life, but I do think that it did show me that I’m doing at least something right.
When I worked at certain retail store, I had this co-worker who drove a pick up truck, listened to metal, and never smiled. He mainly worked in the back of the store and I had no problem with him, because he was a pretty nice and quite guy and also frankly, because I quit around the same time that he was getting hired. Since I didn’t know him very well, I was surprised to find out later that he had started to garner a strange reputation at work. Story has it, that during his 15 minute breaks, he would head over to the break room computer and spend the entire 15 minute break fixated at pictures on cuteoverload.com, a website that is devoted to adorable pictures of animals including, but not exclusive to, kittens. Maybe since I never had the pleasure of getting to know the guy, I found this to be peculiar behavior, but perhaps he was just a cliché, ice cold exterior – total teddy bear interior type of guy. If cute kittens make him happy, than who I am to judge?
I don’t have any hard statistics but I’m guessing that this guy is the exception opposed to the rule when it comes to cuteoverload’s demographics. I’m pretty sure the target demographic for the website is my friend Susan, a girl who will occasionally blurt out phrases like ”that panda is so cuuuuuuute!” I introduced Susan to this website one day and she immediately thought it was the best thing ever. While I typically don’t find myself in front of a computer staring at puppies for hours on end, I can see the appeal for others and how it can be considered therapeutic and uplifting. I on the other hand derive pleasure over unaware humiliation. I wouldn’t say that I’m completely mean spirited, but I admit that I like to laugh at people who look silly (or in harsher words, “like crap”), when it’s not out of irony. Whether it be the girl at the farmer’s market with the fanny pack and Punky Brewster inspired wardrobe or those girls that have just walked out of the club taking pictures of themselves while more closely resembling the appearance of clowns than 20-something year old attractive girls, it’s all giggles to me. Actually, it’s the latter case that has given me a golden idea for a brand new website: makeupoverload.com
Makeupoverload.com would be a site much like cuteoverload, where the content would be based on what people upload. It could be of friends, family, (for legal reasons, I guess I shouldn’t encourage this) strangers or even yourself if you’re willing to admit that you had a phase where you caked yourself out in far too much face paint. The site could serve as a giant PSA telling women across the globe that “while makeup can make you look better, it can also make you look a lot worse.” or at the very least it could tell you “your friends think you look stupid.”, which is probably just as important. I see girls walking down the streets of downtown Fullerton taking pictures of themselves all the time, so there’s definitely not a lack of photos being taken, we’d just need to entice people to upload them to our site.
Of course, now this is where we have to have some sort of flimsy business model. How do we entice people to upload pictures? How do we pay for the server space once this site gets going? The most obvious answer is to sell ad space. What kind of companies would want ad space on our website? Ironically, makeup companies probably would. This probably doesn’t sound like it makes any sense at first, but do you think any of these girls in these pictures, even if they found out that they were on the site, would think that “no more makeup” is the answer to their humiliation? Of course not, they would probably think that better and more expensive makeup would be the cure to their problems, and perhaps we could get sponsored by a makeup company and give the most trashy looking picture of the week/month some sort of makeup kit as a prize to entice people to submit more pictures to our website. While this could be construed as a form of ouroboros, what form of capitalism isn’t?
This site is still in the dream stage and is far from becoming a reality, but I hope that in due time, I will be able to see my dream come to fruition. While Susan and my old work acquaintance can lose themselves in the bliss that is kitten wearing a beanie with a propellor on top, us bitter old kooks could use a site like mine. Sure we have peopleofwalmart.com and lamebook.com, but I believe there is room for makeupoverload.com too.
So, near the end of high school (I think), and definitely during college, my friend Mike and I got into the habit of buying each other gifts for Christmas and our birthdays. With our tight college student budgets, it was quite an accomplishment to do this consistently. I don’t know if we had set a price ceiling, but I’m pretty sure no gift ever exceeded $30 after tax, but it didn’t matter. We knew each other well so that it was easy to get something meaningful AND affordable. Our gifts were often of the geeky variety so to the non-geek, it seemed like we were giving each other random junk. What is one man’s junk is another man’s treasure, I suppose.
My mom was bemused by these gift exchanges because my mom is not a nerd, or at least not a nerd of our generation, so when Mike would buy me a sock monkey or a poster version of Jay and Silent Bob’s blueprints from the movie Mallrats, my mom would complain at the lack of quality gifts that Mike would give me. I, on the other-hand, would buy Mike books, and while these books were kind of geeky (David Sedaris – though Mike thought I was using this book to out him since Sedaris is also gay), my mom thought books were more practical. She didn’t mean it to be critical, and when I told Mike about her criticisms, he was really amused and not offended at all. In fact, for my 21st birthday, inspired to prove my mother wrong, Mike bought me a martini set, complete with a shaker. Not only was it a practical gift, it was kind of classy. My mom really thought Mike had finally come around and what took the cake was the fact that my mom doesn’t actually know what a martini is; she thought that he bought me really cute dessert cups for ice cream.
I don’t think my gift exchanges with Mike back then have taught me any lessons about gift giving that I use today. I’ve always tried to avoid the gift giving faux pas of thoughtless gift card giving and have avoided the other major no-no of gift giving (buying girls clothes/clothing accessories without them picking it out and trying it on). Gift giving isn’t particularly a science, but I take a certain pride in getting people original gifts that they would really like. If I can’t figure out something that’s perfect for someone, I prefer to take them out for a good meal so I can assure them some sort of satisfaction.
Charis and Allison perform for the local community theater a few times year outside of the duties with the Technicolor show. I haven’t been able to see them in all their different performances, and I’ve only seen them once since our last show, but I made sure that they remembered I was there. I came out to watch them on opening night as part of a sold out crowd. I missed them walking down the red carpet because I had to stop by the Fullerton Farmer’s Market so I could pick up some gifts for the girls. I couldn’t just stop anywhere to get the gifts, it had to be the Farmer’s Market. There’s a man who comes down from Gillroy to the Market every Thursday, and I needed to buy some garlic for Charis.
Charis is a very unique 10 year old child. For one, she’s a leap year baby (2/29), and two, she loves garlic, raw garlic. One of my first conversations with Charis consisted of her asking me two questions: Do I like raw garlic? (yes) and How much can you eat at one time? (I have no idea). She then proceeded to tell me how much she can eat at one time, and the fact that the number was greater than 0 was pretty surprising to me. So, I decided that as her gift for opening night, I was only going to get Allison flowers and I was going to get Charis a braid of famous Gillroy garlic.
I had asked her about this possibility before and she told me that she would rather have garlic than flowers, so it wasn’t a total surprise when I gave it to her, but she was still kind of shocked that I followed through with my plan. She wasn’t at all embarrassed to be walking around the courtyard of the theater carrying around a bag of garlic. She even stopped to smell it a couple of times. Allison seemed perfectly content with the more traditional gift of flowers and complained that the garlic made the bottom of her bouquet stink.
I’m sure that if I had pitched this plan to my mom, she would’ve told me that I was being foolish for wanting to buy a kid a bag of garlic, and I’m sure other people would’ve told me the same thing as well, but when a gift is given, (as I knew back in college with Mike) as long as it makes sense to the giver and the receiver, that’s all that matters.
“As you sleep with electric guitars / Range rovin’ with the cinema stars” - Elevate Me Later (Ell Ess Two)
Irvine is a planned community. It is a city owned by the Irvine Company and takes great pride in being considered the “Safest City in America”. It’s located in sunny Southern California and borders Newport Beach in Orange County, widely recognized as one of the richest counties in America. For some reason, they decided to stick a public university there and didn’t build a “college town” around it (if I’m not mistaken, the college was one of the first things built there). I went to said college and stuck around for about a decade. At first I enjoyed being there because things were so convenient. There was almost literally a Target on every corner (or at least off of each major street), which was a drastic change from living in North County San Diego, which is still somewhat still under development.
Unfortunately, we missed out on the college town atmosphere and we didn’t have a football team. The only thing that my roommate Phil and I could really find redeeming about the place (other than it being Will Ferrel’s original stomping grounds) was realizing that Pavement shot one of their music videos not only in the city of Irvine, but at the University shopping center across the street. Sure it is kind of an irrelevant detail in the grand scheme of life, but we took any victory that could. Besides, Pavement, and perhaps the Replacements are the only bands that I can confidently say, shaped my personality as we know it.
My friends, especially Phil, always wondered why I stuck around for so long. I really don’t have an answer. At first, I think I stuck around because I really liked my church, then it was because I still had some close friends around from college, and then eventually I guess I stuck around out of convenience. I’d be foolish to say that Irvine hasn’t shaped me in some way or another but I can’t say how at this point. Some people probably assume that it’s shaped my appetite for fashion, but that was actually caused by my trip to New York a couple of years back. I do feel compelled to at least look decent when I go to the malls here, but that also might be because I’m 28 and single.
“So drunk in the August sun and you’re the kind of girl I like because you’re empty and I’m empty” – Gold Soundz
I’ve always assumed that the longer you date someone, the bigger the fallout becomes when you break up. Sadly, the girl that did the most damage to me… I can’t even say that we actually dated. There was some stringing along, some mixed messages, some feelings shared including the dreaded “I like you but…” In hindsight, I should’ve bolted instead of sticking around for the drama, so I will be fair and assume my share of the blame. She was a couple of years older, so maybe I thought she would be above these shenanigans (naive move on my end). It was a situation that ugly. People got involved (no retraining orders or violence, just a lot of politics, I guess), and right when I thought things were going to calm down, she told me she had started dating someone else with one minute left to go on my lunch break, which led to a pretty ugly breakdown at work. For some reason she kept telling me that she wanted to be friends and I believed her. Then on my birthday, she apparently had forgotten that she “had a date” and that she couldn’t tell me personally, so she sent me the message through our unassuming mutual friend, who I basically yelled at. It was the beginning of the end for me, both at that job and to be honestly, at church as well. It was the first time in my life where I understood what “needing a change of scenery” really meant.
” Was a distant voice/ Made me make a choice/ That I had to get the fuck out of this town” – Box Elder
One day I had left my laptop at my friend’s apartment and I needed it to do some work. I called him but he wasn’t home but he told to swing by and pick it up because his roommate was home so I shouldn’t have a problem. So I knocked on the door and after waiting a few seconds, I turned the knob and walked in and grabbed my laptop from the living room. As I turned to leave, I heard a gun cock back and then saw it pointed at me. I guess my friend didn’t tell his roommate I was on my way over to get the laptop, so I explained to him why I was there and calmly told him “you can put your gun away”. He disarmed the gun, stopped pointing it at me and gave me some sort of explanation about how he was training to be a cop and some people in the complex knew about it and he was paranoid about them or something that didn’t exactly make any sense. (I don’t think he passed his psychological exam – true story) While he didn’t actually fire the gun at me, it was an experience that has definitely stuck with me. I never felt like I was in any inherent danger, but my friend’s apartment in the “safest city in America” was the last place that I ever imagined having a civilian pull a gun on me. While I’m pretty sure this happened before the fiasco with the girl, perhaps I should’ve taken this moment as a realization that I didn’t belong here. It was a moment that didn’t make sense on so many different levels, and usually when this happens in a dream, I wake up because I know I’m in a dream. It was a moment where I should’ve realized that me being in Irvine didn’t make sense, and that I just needed to “get the fuck out of this town”.