Sandy and I got off on the wrong foot. I can’t put my finger on why it happened like that, but our introduction was awkward and we were out of sync from the beginning. I was really excited to meet her, and maybe that’s what ultimately lead to my disappointment. My hopes were too high and in just a matter of days, reality had sent my dreams spiraling to the ground in a blaze of failure. We eventually were able to salvage our relationship, but it wasn’t until after years of space and maturity before I was able to look at Sandy in a different light.
I remember during my first week of middle school, I felt like everything was a total blur. I started middle school the week after Thanksgiving and I had to transition from being a 6th grader in elementary school to a 6th grader in a middle school in the span of a week and a half. I no longer had recess, I had to maneuver my way from class to class across a campus, and I had to keep track of the names of all these new classmates that I had never seen in my life. I got so confused that I was no longer sure that I was speaking the same language as everyone else. I remember the first time I tried to order food from the cafeteria, I asked for a “pop”, and the lunch lady looked at me like there was something wrong with me. After an awkward moment, I said “a coke?” and then she finally responded to me by telling me that they didn’t sell soda, but I was already humiliated.
I became friends with a guy named Dante, who’s name sounds like he would be on Jersey Shore, but he in fact is very much not like a character on Jersey Shore. We got along pretty well and coincidentally enough, we had the same birthday. He didn’t live in my neighborhood and we weren’t within walking distance, but we decided we should hang out anyways. Since this was 1993, we didn’t have access to Google Maps or a GPS, so we were stuck trying to discuss directions over the phone. He had no idea where I lived and since we were kids, giving him major cross streets didn’t help him much, so we decided it might be best for him to give me directions to his house from our school. Dante had a really strange way of giving me directions, though. He started by telling me to drive down the street our school was on, which seemed reasonable enough, but then he would tell me that “if you keep going down the street, you’ll hit a dead end and you will die, so you’ll have to turn on to this other street instead.” After a few more minutes of trying to direct me to his house, his mom decided to intervene and was able to figure out where I lived. She picked me up, we hung out, we had a good time, and we still keep in contact to this day. The end. Eventually middle school stopped feeling like a blur, but it didn’t get much better after that. I made some good friends, but for the most part, I was uncomfortable, I was bummed out, and I pined for the old days.
It wasn’t until college that I could finally feel comfortable with Sandy. The expectations were gone, and I could see why so many people saw that she was beautiful and chill. I realized that I didn’t need to be in love with her. I tried to force feelings when they didn’t need to be forced and we both suffered because of it. Moving at the age of 11 had really filled me with angst and Sandy was just such an easy target to dump all that angst upon. I wanted her to save me from it all, but it didn’t happen until much later, and it didn’t happen all at once. It was a process, and it was a process that didn’t involve her at all. I didn’t give an apology; there was none needed. San Diego isn’t my true love and it’s neither of our fault, it just was never meant to be.
I casually throw out the phrase “I’m going to punch <insert name> in the face!” a lot but it’s usually said out of minor frustration and mostly as a joke. I can only count two times in my life where I put that phrase into practice and I feel pretty justified in both instances. The first time was when I was in 2nd grade, and a couple of kids had stolen my beanie and were playing keep away with it. It was a cold Minnesota Day, so it was in my best interest to get my beanie back as soon as possible. After pleading with the kids that they give it back, they refused, so I just went up to one of the kids and punched him in the face. He got angry and tripped me and I hit the concrete pretty hard. I got my beanie back, he got detention or suspended, and I wasn’t given much more than a warning since I was kind of fighting out of self defense. The 2nd time I punched someone in the face isn’t as cut and dry as far as the story goes. Did he deserve it? I can’t say that he did. Did he have it coming? I at least think he did.
When we moved to San Diego, my piano lessons were right after the lessons of a kid named Kurt. I didn’t see him much, just after his lessons and at recitals at our teacher’s house, but I thought he was a jerk. He was arrogant and liked to make himself feel big by verbally bullying people. He eventually quit playing piano and a couple of years later, I ended up going to the same church as him. He wasn’t as big of a jerk at this point, but I still wasn’t his biggest fan. I wasn’t a big fan of a lot of the kids I grew up with at church, but I definitely wasn’t excited when I found out that I’d have to see him every Sunday. We sort of became friends out of necessity because our parents became friends. I didn’t think he was unbearable but we were very different people. We both started learning guitar around the same time, but quickly I realized he just wanted to learn songs to impress girls like “More Than Words”, “You Were Meant for Me” and “This Gift”, while I wanted to write my own songs and start a band. At church, we would occasionally wrestle around because we were about the same height (I think he was a inch taller maybe, and one night), and one night I just decided that I had enough of his smack talk and overall jerkiness, so i pinned him down on the ground and pummeled his face. Yes, I am exactly the kind of person that punches someone in the face AT CHURCH. I’m not exactly sure if he said anything especially offensive that night, at least it was not offensive enough for me to remember.
After a barrage of punches, I let him go and he stormed out of the room. Needless to say, he wasn’t happy. He was gone for about 20 minutes, and I will freely take artistic liberty here to say he was gone for 20 minutes to cry, but that’s probably not the case. I didn’t break anything or make him bleed, I’m sure I just damaged his pride. After the incident, neither of us ever mentioned it, and our “friendship” continued like it never happened. After high school, we went our separate ways. I would periodically see him around when I was home for weekend in college but that eventually stopped as well. My parents would periodically give me updates on how he was doing even though I never really asked about him. The updates mostly had to do with him trying to run one of his family’s many businesses and eventually running them into the ground. A few months ago, they told me he was dating a girl that his parents liked, but were forbidding him to marry, because they thought she was too short. I told my parents that if this girl was as nice and virtuous as they say she is, then his parents are fools, because he typically has terrible taste in women. (See above about learning guitar) For the first time in my life, I felt bad for the guy. There are valid reasons to be against a marriage, and this was definitely not one of them. They’ve since relented and I’m happy for him. I don’t know if he went toe to toe with his parents on the issue or if they just realized they were being silly. I know it would be difficult for anyone to disagree with his father, a man whose reputation as a successful business man is known, not just in San Diego, but in all of Southern California, so I wouldn’t blame him if he just wilted like a flower every time he wanted to stick up for himself. His father has casted a shadow that Kurt can’t escape, and has perhaps never tried to escape since it’s always been there. He’s always been told that he’s going to be a businessman like his father and I don’t know if he’s ever tried to see if his passions lie elsewhere. He’s been handed a posh life that he never asked for and was never taught to make independent choices. Maybe that’s why, even though I’m definitely not a tough guy, I was able to pin him down and wail on his face. He was never taught to fight for anything in his life.
I went to a high school that had very few Koreans. It had a fair amount of asians, but like I said, very few Koreans, and of those few, I believe a good amount of them were adopted Koreans who had Caucasian parents. So, in short, the environment I grew up in for high school in San Diego was not substantially different from the environment I grew up in for elementary school in Minnesota. There were some obvious differences of course, like I had never met a Filipino person until I moved to San Diego and I was ridiculed for saying the word “pop”.
During my senior year of high school, I ended up going to Winter Formal with one of the few Korean girls at our school. I wasn’t on the prowl for Koreans or anything, it just kind of happened that way. She was a junior and I didn’t know her that well, so I had never met her parents prior to picking her up for the dance. I knew both her parents were doctors, and while that might strike fear into most 17 year olds, I actually showed up at the house quite confident. I’ve always had a pretty good report with Korean parents even though I can’t speak the language very fluently. I attribute this mostly to my innocent looks. Also, since our high school had such a small population of Korean kids, I figured just the novelty of a Korean boy taking their daughter to a dance would bring them great joy. I told my friends “I bet from this point on in her life, every time she goes to a dance/date/ or gets married to a non-Korean guy, they will ask her “what ever happened to that Ryan Pak kid? We really liked him.” My friends didn’t believe me.
The girl and I had a nice time at the dance but we didn’t end up dating or really hanging out after that. I went to college and we ended up losing touch, not that we were ever particularly close to begin with. The following summer I came home and took a summer job at Target (I had worked there the previous summer). I was a cashier and my job was to get people out of that line as soon as possible, so I met a lot of people but most of them have been condensed into a huge blur. So when a customer said “Well, if it isn’t Ryan Park. It’s nice to see you again.” I was pretty confused. I looked up and saw an older Korean woman. She looked kind of familiar but I couldn’t put my finger on where I knew her from. At first I assumed, that she went to my parents’ church and was friends with my Mom and Dad, but then I ruled that out, just because I would’ve been able to realize that right away. She asked me how college was and while we made small talk, I slowly started to realize who this woman was. She was the girl’s mother. A year and a half after my only time meeting her (and for 5 minutes, and that’s probably an overestimation), she had remembered me. I won’t jump to the conclusion that 10 years later, that she’d still remember me, but obviously I had made some sort of impression on her and as silly as that may seem, I can totally relate.
The previous summer at Target, I worked as the “operator”, so my duties included answering the phones and sorting clothes, since the phones are back in the fitting room area (weird, I know). A lot of people came and went, and I would say less than 10% of people who actually tried on clothes actually bought anything. I’d have to clean up after them after they left and sort the clothes to be re-deployed onto their clothing racks or tables. I don’t have any horror stories from working back there, though I’m sure if I had worked there for longer than a summer, I’d probably have some. I just remember this one customer who brought her two kids and her friend. The customer and her friend went to the fitting room with a ton of clothes and left the 2 year old daughter in the shopping cart while her 3-4 year old brother was just standing around. The two ladies were super loud and obnoxious while trying in their fitting room, so I tried to divert my attention to the kids, who were being absolutely neglected.
The kids were pretty well behaved, there wasn’t a crying kid that I needed to console. The boy was pretty involved with playing with his toy but the girl looked pretty bored in the cart when she wasn’t stuffing her face with popcorn. (She was also the most adorable kid that I had ever seen.) First I waved to her and she returned a wave to me. Then I asked her for her name, and she said it was “Kylie”. I think I asked her how old she was and basic questions to help pass the time until her (I presume) Mom and friend were done trying on clothes (they didn’t buy anything). They finished and they started to whisk Kylie away, but not before she tried to offer me some of her popcorn. I declined the offer and her mom was pretty amused that her kid had become so comfortable with me in such a short amount of time. Kylie waved “goodbye” to me and that was the last I ever saw of her. Ever since that chance encounter, I’ve always felt that when/if I have a daughter, I’d like to name her Kylie. It’s probably really silly that this kid that I met once and just for a few minutes could be forever etched in my memory, but certain things stick with me and I’ve just come to accept that. Just like that mother who remembers that Korean boy who took her Korean daughter to winter formal, I remember this little kid who offered me popcorn. The only thing weird about these memories is that they happened at the same Target, during two different two different years, and with me working different jobs.
I’ll be the first to admit that I was pretty weird in high school, but I’m sure a lot of people will say they were weird too. Of course, those people will talk about how much they’ve grown up and found themselves since then. I realize I’m still pretty weird. I really don’t think I’m that different. I’m more mature, wiser, and more refined, sure, but I don’t think I’m a much different person from the one that I was 10 years ago, I just think my wackiness is much more appreciated now.
During my senior year of high school, I took AP Biology. I wasn’t so much interested in biology or gaining college credits as I was about keeping my GPA high (AP classes were “weighted”, so an A = 5 points, B = 4 points, C = 3 points, etc). I got paired up with a junior named Mike (but not the same Mike as in this story). We were kind of an odd couple at first glance. I was fighting senioritis, while Mike was still trying to be the best student he could be. We actually had a lot in common though. We were both heavily involved with our respective youth groups and both loved sports. I think he respected my dedication to my Minnesota teams and he was a fan of anything Sacramento (which I guess is just the Kings). So, Mike and I had a lot to talk about during classes and we generally enjoyed working together, even though I was on the lazy and unfocussed side.
I like to think that I contributed the entertainment to our lab partnership, thought I’m not sure Mike will agree with this in hindsight. I remember making him laugh a lot in class, sometimes with wit, sometimes with absurdity. I think the pinnacle of our time in AP Biology was when we had different microscope stations set up and I found a rolling chair. This was during a time where the Goo Goo Dolls were at their peak and the video for “Iris” was in heavy rotation. I never really liked the Goo Goo Dolls and their brand of inoffensive acoustic pop rock or for Johnny Reznik’s haircut, but I do vividly remember the video for “Iris” and how Reznik was in a watch tower going from telescope to telescope looking a different scenes from the movie City of Angels. I did my best to replicate this video for Mike in class, wheeling myself from microscope singing “AND I DON’T WANT THE WORLD TO SEE ME/ ‘CUZ I DON’T THINK THAT THEY’D UNDERSTAND/ THAT EVERYTHING IS MADE TO BE BROKEN/ I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHO I AMMMMM” in a pirate voice over and over again. My only guess on why I chose a pirate voice is because I didn’t want people to mistake me for someone who actually liked the song. I don’t know if Mike enjoyed my rendition, but like everything else I did, I know he tolerated it.
I will in no way ever say that Mike is/was as weird as I was, and maybe he did this as a really passive aggressive gesture, but the summer after he graduated (and I finished my freshmen year of college), Mike called me and told me he was selling knives door to door as a summer job and asked if he could drop by for an hour and give me his spiel. I was familiar with this job and I knew that he would get paid by the company whether I bought any knives or not so I told him he could drop by and we could catch up. Unfortunately, Mike actually sincerely tried to sell me the knives and seemed disappointed when I wasn’t having any of it. We did get to catch up so I wouldn’t say it was a wasted visit, but I remembered being pretty annoyed that he actually thought he could sell a poor 19 year old a set of pricey knives. My diet at school was Shin Ramen and In-N-Out. I had no needs for knives, I just needed a pot and chopsticks. So my final answer was ‘no’ and we chatted it up for a little bit.
I found out that Mike and I have a mutual friend and I recently shared these stories about him with them. While they aren’t shocked that I would replicate the “Iris” video while serenading Mike, they were surprised and amused to find out that their dear friend was a door to door knife salesmen for a summer, which leads me to wonder how weird I actually am if people find my behavior to be pretty consistent, or “typical”. Isn’t it weirder when someone drastically changes or has unbelievable stories about how they used to be than to be someone who’s been the same all along?
I was at my friend’s apartment over the weekend and he had a vocoder. I spent a good 5 minutes screaming “PA-PA-PA-PA-POKERFACE” over and over again into the mic while my friend hit random keys. I could hear my friends laughing and I was enjoying myself as well. I have a feeling that if Mike was there, he’d still be shaking his head in disapproval, but being amused at the same time just like he was back in high school, because I’d like to think that my serenading of people is pretty universally hilarious. I’d like to see Mike again sometime, not just to see how much we’ve changed or to make fun of how we were in high school, but because there was definitely substance to our friendship. If we could put up with our teen weirdnesses, songs and sales pitches, it seems like continuing our friendship as mature adults should be a walk in the park.
Growing up, I took a lot of things for granted. There’d always be toilet paper, I’d always have a laundry basket, there’d always be (unexpired) milk in the fridge. These are things that are pretty necessary (maybe not the milk) to live and are a pain when you are without them. I kind of groan when toilet paper needs to be purchased, and I was pretty infuriated when someone decided to steal my laundry basket from the laundry room a couple of months ago. While cheap, replacing some sort of laundry transport device is seriously frustrating, especially when you’re in the middle of doing your laundry.
My friend Mike grew up as a navy brat. He spent the first couple years of life in Spain and his recollection of Spain was less than glamorous. He doesn’t speak about tapas or the beautiful view. He talks about how the TV only had a couple of channels in English and how the highlight of his day was being able to watch Thundercats. (I forget whether he had to watch it in Spanish or not.)
He moved to the States and went to school. His family was financially in good shape, they were a pretty American household. 4 bedrooms, 3 kids, a couple of cars, they were middle class, if not upper middle class. They had cable TV, computers, video games, all the things a teenage boy would want, except one thing: a microwave.
We were probably 13 or 14 years old at the time when Mike told me about how his family was researching various microwaves. He was absolutely giddy about it, like if a kid were to get a new bike, or a new video game. I’m not sure why this family had been sans microwave for so long; they could definitely afford it. I don’t recall any stories about how the old one crapped out, or how they had a toaster oven instead, they just didn’t have a microwave but now for some reason felt that they needed one. How they were able to manage without one for so long never really popped up in my adolecent brain, but now that I think about it, is pretty impressive.
So on one glorious fateful day, I came over to Mike’s house and there was a microwave, and Mike wanted to make me something using said microwave. Sounds weird, I know, but since I knew how much the microwave meant to him, I obliged and told him that I would like some nachos. It was something easy, and something that would ideally be made in a microwave. So he piled a bunch of chips on a plate and put some cheese (those weird liquidy Velveeta cheese slices, which probably barely qualify as cheese) on top, threw the plate in the microwave and let his new prized possession do the rest.
We sat down to watch some TV and Mike beamed with excitement. The microwave had made him into a new man. The microwave beeped to let us know it was done and Mike brought me back my nachos. Unfortunately, the microwave’s nacho auto-cooking auto setting didn’t know how to handle Velveeta cheese and ended up burning my nachos. I had never encountered burnt nachos before then, so I chose to ridicule Mike. He blamed his failure on his inexperience with microwaves and vowed to do a better job in the future.
I think we both learned a valuable lesson that day. No matter how high tech the device, common sense will always be needed and that should never be taken for granted.