If you want to join Boy Scouts but are under 11, you join Cub Scouts. But if you want to join Cub Scouts before you turn 8, you get to join a special one-year program called Tiger Cubs. This was changed this year, now they added a Tiger Rank to Cub Scouts, so now I suppose they have to wear the uniform one year earlier than I did. In case you aren't familiar with Cub Scouts, much of the structure and inspiration comes from the Jungle Book, because Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouts, was friends with Rudyard Kipling.

Anyways one of the typical Tiger Cub field trips was to the local police station. I only have vague memories of the actual trip, to be honest. I remember sitting in a car and turning the siren on and off, but not much else except for them taking our fingerprints (for fun, not for future use) and letting us keep the fingerprint record. I remember being surprised that they have to mash and roll your finger from side to side to get a larger print, except for the thumbprint. Anyways I was bored at some point and started filling out the rest of the card. While I could read it, I didn't understand what they were asking for each time, but I knew no one was going to see it so at time I wrote what I thought they were asking for.

Later that day my I heard my mom laughing in the other room, so I asked her what was so funny. She said, "Look at what you did here, for race you wrote 'fast'."

I didn't know what she meant, so I replied, "Well, I thought I could run pretty fast.."

"No, do you know what race is? You know how some people are white and some are black, right? But you are fast..," she said until she couldn't keep from laughing again. Of course she showed my dad, and all of her friends, then stored it for a few years of embarrassment. I wouldn't understand why she cruelly brought up this one mistake with others who would then begin laughing at me until years later.

I wondered why it wasn't as funny to my dad, but I learned later that they once went to a small diner while traveling through New Mexico that refused to serve my mom, which probably made the whole topic a lot less funny. They thought she was an (American) Indian, so I'm guessing this was near a reservation. Anyways my mom told me that my dad flipped out and yelled at the cashier, cook, and manager about how they couldn't do that, and that she was actually Vietnamese. This went on for a few minutes until they threatened to call the police. My mom, who had only been in the US for a couple years at that point, had no real concept of racism, so she sided with the restaurant with trying to get my dad to calm down so they could leave. She told me, "In Vietnam everyone is Vietnamese, but they wouldn't turn away anyone who wasn't because they would spend a lot of money and give out big tips. It was weird that they didn't want to serve us, and I wondered how they were going to stay in business like that? I thought they were just really lazy. Your father on the other hand, went berserk. I was much more ashamed of him than of myself."

mood: contemplative music: L Double - Da Bass II Dark tags: boy scout, humor, racism, scouting

Deciding on how to begin is what has been keeping me from starting, as there is just too much to tell. I am opting for filling in the details along the way instead of boring you with details that may or may not apply to what I write. The main problem with this approach is that I know that my life is quite unusual, and I have tried to make it unusual for as long as I can remember.

Some of my earliest memories are of me introducing myself to classmates, probably on the first day of a school year, and realizing that my background was quite a bit different than everyone else's. My mom grew up in Vietnam during the war, and my dad grew up in the US but moved from state to state every year or so, never settling in any one place. He eventually became joined the army after attending UC Berkeley (not the typical path for a Cal graduate) to avoid being drafted into an expendable position. This worked well as he became a Green Beret in the 101st Airborne division. As he spent his whole youth moving from state to state, he developed a very outgoing personality, friendly and constantly joking with others, including complete strangers. When I say constantly joking, I mean he rarely says anything seriously. This is quite disarming and he tends to get along with everyone. These are all traits which I have, or rather I used to have. I am much more shy towards strangers, as I only had to move once during my childhood. As far as seriousness goes, this entry is probably as serious as I've ever been, and it still contains jokes.

At some point when I was young my mom realized or decided that I was smart and gifted. There is a lot to support this, even though when I was young I refused to believe I was different than anyone else. She bought me numerous educational books, each full of different problems to solve for various subjects. This was before I went to any school, even before pre-school, and I was able to complete all of them. I remember going to pre-school for 1 day, and when my mom picked me up they said I was too smart to be there, as I could already read and write. While everyone else traced their hand, I traced it, and wrote my age and name beside it. (As far as I know my mom still has this packed away somewhere) I then decided to trace my other hand, and both of my feet, and finished by labeling each one (left hand, right feet, etc.) The funny part about this was that I couldn't hold the crayon properly, and had to hold it in my fist, with the point sticking out the side opposite my thumb (like how the knife was held in the shower scene in Psycho.)

This is a good example of my personality. I like to learn things on my own, and if I learn something the wrong way I will try to make it work for me rather than start over and learn the correct way. In my mind, that would be admitting defeat and mean that I've been wasting my time for nothing. To further illustrate, I am left-handed, but I have abysmal handwriting because I never bothered to learn the correct way to write as I had no example at home. When I first saw other southpaws in elementary school turn their whole paper sideways and write from top-to-bottom, it was too strange and I figured that it would be harder to start over and re-learn how to write than it would be to deal with teachers and parents criticizing me on how lousy my penmanship was. Obviously this was a mistake that keeps coming back to haunt me, as by the time I was learning Japanese in college, my professors would constanlty have to ask me to help them read what I wrote. When I told them what some of the characters were supposed to be it would sometimes bring them to tears. If you don't already know, penmanship plays a far larger role in Japanese than in most languages, and to make mistakes from trying to write quickly is quite disrespectful. The professors also could not help me, for when I showed them what I was doing, they could only say, "Oh, in Japan we don't write with our left hand."

It gets worse than that. As I can't write sideways, I cannot stand pens, nor can I write in cursive. I will just smear ink all over the place with pens as my fingers run through the fresh ink, while longhand tires my hand quickly. The worst is trying to write in cursive with an erasable pen. Unless I write one letter at a time and wait for each to dry, there will be no legible results.

If you are wondering where I am going with this, please note that I am also keeping entries on my current situation, but I'd rather not make them public. However I can make you a friend if you would like, let me know or leave a comment. There are other reasons for this as well, for instance the person who has caused me to reevaluate my life also has a journal on LJ. Well, I think she still does, she may not be adding to it anymore after I saw a couple sentences in the recent posts section and almost lost my mind. Or perhaps I did lose my mind, as I still can't believe I am writing this. I feel self-centered bothering others with my problems, but my choices are limited now that I no longer have any friends to talk to. (I'll go into how I lost them all at some point)

location: home mood: uncomfortable music: Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted tags: child, left-handed, preschool, southpaw