I am blessed with great parents. I have credit the small amount of good traits I have to them. They both work their asses off for my sister and me. The story about how my mom and dad met is not your average love at first sight romantic comedy.
My dad came to the US in 1978. He graduated college in Hanyang University in Korea with a degree in electrical engineering. However, he decided to come to the US to start a new life. He had a ton of odd jobs when he got to Los Angeles. He worked at a gas station. He worked at a fish market. All these jobs did not let him utilized what he learned in college. Well aside from changing light bulbs. So while he was working at the fish market, my mom’s mom, halmuni, saw my dad. According to her, she saw that he was unusually tall for a Korean of that generation. He seemed like a hard worker, and he didn’t have a ring on her finger. She invited him to her house because it looked like he didn’t have a good home cooked meal in a while. My dad thought fuck it why not and went. She seemed like a nice lady.
So when my dad went to my halmuni’s house, he was met with lots of good food. It was just him and her sitting at the dinner table. My halmuni liked the way my dad was eating food. She says he ate the way men should eat. Not too sloppy but not like a pussy either. So halmuni gets a picture of my mom and shows it to my dad and tells him that she would like my dad to marry her daughter. My dad saw the picture and thought why not. She is pretty cute. So my halmuni give my dad some cash to go to korea and find my mom. My dad agreed.
My dad gets to Korea and meets my mom. My mom was living with her siblings. Now my mom family is all tiny in stature. My mom is 4’8 on a good day. So my dad thought he stepped into Snow White’s house. What is up with all these short people, he thought. But he met my mom, regardless. Thought she was cool and after a couple of dates, he brought my mom to the US and got married.
They have completely different personalities and yet they have stuck together for all these years. They have grown to love each other and undoubtedly they love my sister and me. Every day that I live my life, I am reminded how lucky I am that my parents are always there for me. Sure, we still have a lot of differences and they are not fully approving of my career choice but it is understandable. Thanks mom and dad for supporting this scumbag.
I find it kind of funny how minorities are kicking white people’s asses in academics. Even in English! Sure we have accents and may not be the best writers in class but just look at the national spelling bee. Those Indian kids are kicking everyone’s ass. Here are a list of names of the champions of Scripps National Spelling Bee for the last 7 years:
2002 Pratyush Buddiga
2003 Sai R. Gunturi
2004 David Scott Pilarski Tidmarsh
2005 Anurag Kashyap
2006 Katharine Close
2007 Evan O’Dorney
2008 Sameer Mishra
So I guess this dude needs a girl.
Contrary to what people think, I used to be pretty smooth with chicks at an early age. I was a cute kid. Unfortunately, as I grew older and fatter, I started looking like Kim Jong Il. Here are some tales of the inner pimp in me.
East LA is a wonderful place. Whores, crack dealers, police, gangs, you name it we have it. At the age of 4, I was enrolled in a preschool called Murchinson preschool. I didn’t know a word of English but it was ok because none of the Mexican kids spoke English either. The teachers were nice. I had 2 teachers in preschool. One of the teachers, Mrs. B, was a sweet old white lady. She was great with the kids. I remembered her because she loved to give hugs and she smelled of old perfume and oatmeal cookies.
The other teacher was Ms. Lopez. She always dressed up like a tranny-stripper. She had lots of makeup on and loved to wear clothes that revealed lots of skin. Bitch had an adam’s apple too. She smelled like baby oil.
Murchinson is where I had my first “girl friend”. Can you believe that? At the age of 4! Her name was Virginia. She was the prettiest girl in class. She didn’t speak any English and neither did I but I recall that we always held hands and kissed. I guess it became too much for the teachers because I remember being scolded many times for kissing her. But my pimp days were not over.
The next year, I was enrolled in a private school in East LA. Private school in East LA meant that most of the teachers were nuns. Everything else is the same in terms of curriculum. So for Kindergarten, I had my second girlfriend. Her name was Jessica Murphy. She was ¼ Japanese, ¼ Irish, ½ Mexican. She was Tiger Woods without much athletic prowess. Anyways, during the first day there, she comes up to me and motions for me to go play with her on the swings. I didn’t really know what she was saying because I didn’t learn shit preschool. So I go play with her. I push this cute bitch around and when recess is over she grabs my hand. I guess our parents thought it was cute. However, my teacher was this mean bitch of a nun. Sister Magdalena! She hated that me and Jessica were so close and actually when she caught is kissing in the playground she took me to the principal’s office. They even called my parents. The funny thing about the whole incident is that my parents both came because they thought it was something serious. They didn’t speak any English so it was basically these two fucked up nuns trying to explain to my parents that I was kissing this girl. However, my parents didn’t understand what they were saying so the nuns were playing charades to show what happened. When my parents understood what happened, they were pissed. Not at the fact that I was kissing a girl but because they took time off of their work for some stupid reason. When I got home, they whooped my ass.
Its seriously hard out there for a pimp.
So my life was a little different from a lot of Asian American kids that you see. Most Koreans who own liquor stores in shitty neighborhoods usually live in the suburbs. Northridge, South Pasadena, Fullerton, Cerritos are all places that these Koreans tend to buy their homes so that their kids don’t have to face the experiences of the inner city that they are in. My parents were slightly different in this sense. They decided to buy a store in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles. Not only did they buy a store there, they decided to buy a home right behind the store. Thanks mom and dad for making such great future decisions!
If you are not familiar with East Los Angeles, let me give you a brief description. Every one there is Mexican. Not El Salvadorean or Puerto Rican or Cuban but Mexican. This wouldn’t be so bad except that everyone in my neighborhood were basically drug addicts, thugs/cholos, and criminals. On top of that, school was taught in bilingual education.
So for a kid like me to be accepted by the other kids in the neighborhood, I had to fight them first. So this is my recollection of my first fight ever. The kids in the neighborhood called me Chinito which basically means little Chinese boy. I was upset because they said it like they were trying to insult me. It wasn’t the meaning but the tone that pissed me off. So this kid named Christopher a.k.a Boo Boo called me the dreaded Chinito. To which I called him a Wetback, due to my mom’s instructions. We got into a fight at the park near my house. Boo Boo was about 2-3 years older than me and about a foot taller than me. I remember being so scared because I was a pit of a pansy growing up. Anyways, so as the fight commenced, Boo Boo hit me good with a shoot to the face. My knees became noodles. I was such a bitch for getting clocked once in the face and I crumbled to the ground.
I walked home with tears streaming down my face. My mom was in the kitchen when I walked in. She saw me and asked what happened. I figured if I told my mom, she would comfort me but boy was I wrong! She looked at me and said you are not allowed in this house unless you go beat that kids ass. She pushed me out the house and locked the door. It was around dinner time now and I was hungry. But if I don’t kick the dreaded Boo Boo’s ass, I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner. So my only choice was to go to Boo Boo’s house. I got to Boo Boo’s house and he is at home with his family. I guess his family found it weird that I would walk into their house but they didn’t say anything. I walked right up to Boo Boo and threw a haymaker that connected right on the button. He didn’t even flinch! I thought if I hit him with all that I had he would die or something. But he didn’t even move back. But then after a 4 second delay, blood started pouring out of his nose. The sight of his own blood triggered him to cry. His parents just didn’t know what to do. Some little asian kid walks into their house. Walks up to their son and sucker punches him. If that happened to my kid I would not know what to do.
As soon as Boo Boo started crying, I turned around and walked home. I told my mom that what happened and she let me in the house. That’s when I first learned that my mom hates losers.
