Before you read…

I don’t have superpowers…but I’m pretty smart. I haven’t traveled the world…but I have traveled my mind. I’m not a cancer survivor…but maybe I will be someday. I’m not much different from you…and that is why I’m writing this autobiography. Because you can always find some “unique” blog about say….some gay dude who’s dealing with his newfound liking in terms of religion or some chick’s love story with an unexpecting friend. Well….there’s plenty of those…what I have is….a real story. The story of a child hooligan…grew to be a teenager who thought he was the shit…grew up some more and then found out he wasn’t…and now just doesn’t care. I’m not a winner. I’m not a loser. I’m just damn handsome. Enjoy my autobiography.

Kindergarten

in a way…you got an idea of what kind of child i was. ssssooo…let’s move up a year or two.

in 1996, i entered kindergarten. my teacher was Mrs. Di Pierro…a not so old italian lady. she was nice. but before i get into this other story….lemme back track a little back…about a year or so. before i started going to school…my older brother was already in first grade and my dad was teaching him multiplication. he made my brother do the entire times table from 1 x 1 to 10 x 10 everyday before my computer could play on the computer or outside. one night…my brother left his finished multiplication sheet on the table and i was walking by and caught sight of it. i look at it and looked away…i never read it let alone look at it long enough to comprehend anything on it. so actually….im not even sure it was a multiplication sheet but all i know is i remember thinking it was. the next day…i asked my dad for a time tables and completed it. even looking back now…i don’t remember ever learning multiplication or addition or subtraction or even division…i just remember knowing it. in fact….my mathematics skillz far exceeded my english/writing skills because when looking back through a coloring book i made in kindergarten. i wrote “I am smart.” and drew a picture of me answering a question on the board that three time three equals nine. however….on closer inspection….i had written it as “ε x ε = 9″

this elementary school was, likely to no one’s surprise, mostly consisting of white middle class suburban boys and girls. so those few colored minority kids…they assumed that we didn’t know how to speak english and sent us off to this special class…kinda like an ESL class but not really. im not saying my english was perfect but i still think it was an asshole move to do this. because…i effing hated going to that thing so much. i felt like a dumbfuck whenever i was at it…sure i’ve proven them wrong as hell in retrospect but still…i still hate english because i feel like i cant speak correctly or properly enough. but i disgress…back to the class itself. in that little ESL-like class of mine…there were five of us…me, two mexican girls (who i still remember to this day), and two mexican teachers…they were nice. i have nothing against the people…just the class. one day…during recess…while i was kicking my fellow 5 yr. olds’ asses at soccer. out of the corner of my eye…i spot my ESL teacher open the door out to the recess play area. two words came to my head….”Not today.” and i ran for it. now…get this…the kindergarten play area was large but surrounded in a chain link fence. there was no where to run so i try hiding in a crowded (assassins creed style) but she saw me. we made eye contact. it was too late…i was done for. so i ran for it. i ran straight for the fence and climbed for my life. she was stupid…she saw what i was doing and started power walking to my position. despite my chubbiness…i climbed like a demi-god. as she closed on my position…i made it to the top and jumped…sure..i may have rolled and scraped my knees but i escaped. but…..when i got up and looked around….i realized i actually climbed over the fence and into the school bike racks which were also enclosed in a separate ring of fence. that was a sad day…

here’s a video of me on christmas in 1997. im the younger boy in the bowl cut. enjoy.

 

The Childhood: Part Three

my first pet was a hamster. i name her “Boney”…or “Bonie” or “Bony”…i didn’t bother with spelling back in the day and neither did i even know why i called her that. she was this small gray little hamster that my parents bought for me at the local pet shop about five minutes away…i was too young at the time to even know what to do with her. all i did was sit there and watch her run in her hamster wheel. i watched her make a little igloo-thingy out of the wood chips. one day i tried to hold her…i took her out of her cage and she bit me. she effing bit me so i dropped her back in her cage…hahaha i never picked her up again. another day, i accidentally left the cage door open and she got out. my parents somehow miraculously found her in between  the boxes in the corner of the garage. i didn’t have her for long…Boney died within the year and to this day i dont know why…i guessed it was because her cage smelled so bad that she died of stinkiness. nonetheless….i decided to bury her in my backyard along with some of my toys as a grave marker…because….well….i was hoping to dig her up in a few weeks and have a cool fossil of a hamster. THANK GOD! i lost the toy marker and so, never got the chance to dig her up.

when i was a kid…before my hometown grew up. before the housing boom. before the mall was built. before the first walmart and costco came. while the local supermarket was still Lucky’s and the closest Target was ~20 mins away…there was a small creek that ran by an even smaller park near my house. my dad used to take me and my brother for walks or short bike rides to this creek where we’d watch the tadpoles swim around and catch the frogs. we had a small plastic container that used to belong to my brother’s old turtle which he had left turned over in the sun on accident. so…i’d catch my frogs in there and feed them bees. i’d “catch” bees, cut off their stingers, and place the bees on little ice cubes in the container to keep them fresh for the frogs. high class living for those frogs.

speaking of bees…the house i grew up in was brand new. like….my parents bought it before it was finished being built sssooo the area surrounding was still very much owned by mother nature. we had a wooden patio which the bees loved to make hives up in. my dad used to spray them down with water but as i grew to the great age of 4…i felt that i could take over his job and let my dad have time to focus on his engineering endeavors. on a nice and hot sunny southern californian day…my brother and i strapped on our raincoats, snow gloves, bike helmets, pants, socks and sandals. this was our standard armor for bee hunting. my brother had a hollow plastic bat while i used my styrofoam bat. we felt so hardcore. so badass. our strategy consisted of an initial skirmish followed by an all-out assault. so…imagine two little asian boys…one skinny and other chubby…dressed for the winter on a hot sunny day. i would hide behind the corner of the house…while my brother snuck up to the hive. he javelin-ed the hive with his bat and then ran for his life. take into account…this scenario occurred multiple times before my brother actually even hit the hive. but when he did…we came out screaming from our entrenched positions and start bat-whacking the hive to pieces. im sure some of the permanent stains in the concrete are a result of this. the bees would be swarming around us and well…ummmm…i wasnt coordinated enough at that age to perform precision air strikes. i was a flailing maniac……..i knew not who was friend or foe. and thus…my brother refused to go ever go bee hunting with me ever again.

lemme apologize for the lack of chronological organization. it’ll be more organized once my memories are more recent

The Childhood: Part Two

when my brother was about 5 yrs. old…he went to this preschool nearby my house. sooo…if he was five…then i must have been only 3 yrs. old. every morning during the week, i would go with my mom  to go drop him off at the preschool. to drop him off…we would walk in with him through this dingy hallway…you had to walk past a kitchen and the playroom to get to the classroom. being the little hoodlum that i was, i would sneak into their kitchen to steal some food on the way out every single time. sometimes it was a nutri-grain bar…but the high life came when they stocked up on POP TARTS! my cute three year old bod wasn’t even tall enough to reach the top of their stainless steel counters but somehow, i snatched the goodies. mannn…at the time, pop tarts were the shit. my favorite was the brown sugar cinammon ones…mmmm no fruity hints…just plain sugar to the hundred trillion. but the my luck ran out one day….i got caught. the day was no different than any other but when i stepped into the kitchen that day…there was a lady working inside…she spotted me immediately. i froze. i thought i was gunna get spanked. but see…i was clever…i realized…wait…im a little three year old asian boy with chubby cheeks. im too cute to be spanked by anyone other than my mom. so i put on my cute face and walked out with a strawberry nutri-grain bar.

side note: i later told my brother and he tried the same thing. he got yelled at and left the kitchen empty-handed.

when i was a kid…i was never good at sharing (i’m still not to this day). i simply didn’t and dont trust other people with my prized possessions. but before i begin with this story…lemme give you a gist of my what my neighborhood was like. have you seen Hey Arnold? where all the kids in the neighborhood knew each other and they all played in the streets together every afternoon?…well…that was the childhood neighborhood i grew up in…i loved it and miss it to this day. because thats like nonexistent now. but anyways story time…i had neighbor across the street. a mexican girl my age and a much much older brother. one afternoon, all of the kids were playing outside and i had my little tricycle. i was squabbling around on it when the mexican girl came up to me and asked if she could ride my tricycle. to be honest…i did not effing wanna let her ride my tricycle…but my social skills were terrible at that age so all i did was stand up and step to the side. not a word was spoken. i literally looked at her, stood up, got off, and stared at her. so understandably…she hopped on and rode away. she didn’t even get ten feet away when i bustedddd into TEARS…i balled like crazy. my parents ran up to me and was like what happened? and i screamed “she took mah bike!” and my dad was like “its okay. let her ride your bike. it’s ok!” but the girl (her name was Alyssa i think ) turned around immediately and gave it back…she was like “here. you can have you bike back.” but she did it in a bitchy way. and so….i rode off….like this:

i know a lot of people never got along with their older brother or older sister…or younger sibling. but me and my older brother were like rice and soy sauce….when times were good and you had something else to eat…you didn’t eat rice and soy sauce. but when shit got down…you got live off of this nasty combination. remember the time when mickey d’s (McDonald’s) playgrounds were the place of unrestricted rainbow happiness?? my mom would sometimes take her there to just play and not even buy any food because we were within walking distance to the local mickey d. well…one day…it was a pretty slow day because there was only me and my brother and some other white kid in the playground. and me and my brother decided that we should play with this kid as well. so we all played tag and he was it. given i was younger…he went for me. i crawled as fast i could through those effing red and yellow tubes but he eventually got me. he tagged me and was like…”You’re it, Mexican BOY!” i might have not been even 5 yrs old yet and he was no more than 7. but when he said that…he just reeked of FUCK YEAH WHITE AMERICA. and also…i’m…not…even…mexican. look at my eyes dude…..so i let him crawl away. i found my brother…and explained to him the situation. with his mom gone to pick up their BigMac’s and him trapped deep inside the playground. me and my brother explained to him his ethnic injustice and the error of his ways.

The Childhood: Part One

hmmm..let’s start with the earliest memory i can recall. i don’t know exactly how old i was at this time but it was for sure before i was in kindergarten…so before i was 5 and before 1997. i had a high chair like many other toddlers of my age…it was white with light blue accents…but man did i hate that thing. one day…i was eating a popsicle stick on a nice sunny day in my family room. my mom had sat me down in the chair while she went off to clean up the house or whatever. i don’t remember what. but i sat there nobbling on my popsicle. it was a Big Stick i think (see fig. 1 for an example). however…like i said before…i hated being restricted to that high chair. so i decided to stand up to stretch…..and well…..something happened and i actually really don’t even remember what. the next thing i remember was me and my mom standing in front of the mirror in our bathroom. my popsicle was gone and my mom seemed to be distressed for some reason. but then i found my popsicle! well…the stick at least. it was sticking out of my head….about a centimeter over the left edge of my left eyebrow. i still have a scar there to this day…it’s kinda like a battle scar. kinda.

hmmm…i wanted to do this i perfect chronological order but memories are coming randomly. i’ll just try to keep this in the rough/general range of my childhood.

from kindergarten to third grade…i had a crush on this girl named Neda. hahah weird name right? i have yet to come across that name again. i think she was persian or something. but yeahhhh…i had a crush on this girl. i was a young little asian boy with a bowl cut (as you can see above in the picture)…and she was what i perceived to be any exotic delicacy with dark curly hair and buck teeth. in my younger days…i used to think girls never used the restroom because they were so pretty. i didn’t come to terms that this wasn’t true until much later. but i digress. i had a crush on Neda. but her best friend had a crush on me. her friend was jessica…this thin-lipped girl with freckles and i knew i was out of her league. so i threw away her “secret admirer” notes…effing mean of me right? i know. but for years i had a crush on this Neda girl until a fateful day in third grade. that day…it was story time. my teacher was reading to the class…”Holes” by Louis Sachar. i was sitting behind Neda. i would always try to be funny…like make jokes to Neda about something in the book. girls love humor. so…eventually…the moment presented itself…and so i stood up out of my seat to whisper the joke to her. but at this time…the back collar of her shirt was slightly stretched in the back which revealed a good extra two or three inches of her back. and what i saw did not please. her back had well-development peach fuzz like a the chest of a post-puberty American boy. from that day on…i never spoke with her ever again.

in fifth grade…i got reconnected with a friend of mine from third grade who had moved away. his name was travis. at our little elementary school, he had been considered one of the cool kids back in the day because at that time…we had always though the bros were cool. for those of you who have a different understanding of the term…in my area, bros were those kids who rode dirt bikes and quads and wore brands like Fox, Skin, and what not. despite our differences (those were the days when we didn’t care about how different we are)…me and him were really good friends. in fifth grade…he invited me to his ten year old birthday and mannnnn was i excited to go. so that winter night…my mom drove me to his house and dropped me off with a present and sleeping bag. we were having a male slumber party. there were about 15 kids total at the party. the first thing we played was capture the flag in the family room. so imagine 15 hyper kids playing CTF in small room. it was basically impossible to capture the other teams flag so i devised a plan…..i would wrap myself in one of the sleeping bags and crawl across like worm. YES! i am fully aware that there are many flaws in this plan…but it seemed perfect at the time. so i crawled into and started to wiggle across…within ten seconds…i got trampled by like five different kids. and bumped my head on something. when i got out of the bag…it turned out i never even cross the line…i went horizontal and hit the wall. eventuallyyyyyyyyyyyy we ended the game because one of my friends had to go pee. he was about to use the one downstairs but travis said it smelled so he had to go upstairs. after the break…we ended up TP-ing some girl’s house that travis knew. i never TP-ed before so when i stood there on the lawn, i throw the entire roll over their roof…i thought it would spin and unravel but turns out i spun it the wrong way AND didnt even rip off the first sheet so it was still pasted together. so there it sat…plopped on their backyard. a perfectly clean roll of toilet paper. worthy of being taken inside and used. after the TP extravaganza…we went back and went to sleep. i woke up in the middle of the night though….because i…well…had to go pee really really badly. but i didnt know what to do because travis said we couldnt use the downstairs restroom. i didnt wanna go upstairs because i was afraid of monsters. so i tried to walk it off…so there i was…a nine year old asian boy walking around in the darkness. i laid back down and tried to sleep it off but i couldnt. i got up…at this point…my urge to pee outgrew my fear of monsters. but i was a polite boy. i didn’t want to use the downstairs bathroom if travis said i couldn’t. and i didn’t wanna go upstairs because i might wake up his parents. i didn’t wanna be impolite….so after much thought…i walked over to the kitchen sink. climb up onto the kitchen counter. and pissed into their sink. at about 90% relieved…the upstairs light turned on and i quickly prematurely ceased my actions and returned to my sleeping bag. i later discovered that morning that travis didn’t want us to use the downstairs bathroom because it stank of new paint…..i couldve used it…..oh well….

that’s enough for today….

Wha wha wha what it isssss…

This is a complete story of my life. Every single memory I have. Everything I can remember…mentally barfed into words. Just in case I lose all my memories someday…I’ll still have this to know what I kind of life I led.

alright….so this is me. my name is james. i grew up and spent my entire pre-college life in the sun-glazed suburbs of Southern California. i got an older brother who i did everything with during our childhood and my mom and dad who always kept their eyes on me. i am now an undergraduate student at Stanford University and trying to make something out of my life. but enough of this summary….let’s start looking at what kind of shit i got in my memories….