Adventure in Second Person

You think back, and wonder.

You think through a haze, peeling back all the layers of the past, unraveling alongside that tangled strand of web, and hoping to spot that sparkle of a dew drop that marks the turning point. What was it like, back in the old country? ...No, it couldn't have happened then. Sure, you got slapped around a few times, mostly for talking back or inappropriate self-discovery, but it was all fine. You were famous among the parents for putting words to paper, and had special tutoring from the art teacher, and got chastised for screwing around in class a few times. You remember a girl with a bob haircut putting you in a chicken wing, but also two others, one with a braid and the other who wore hers in buns, who laughed and chased you through that park with the lake, on the way back to the apartment blocks where you all lived. (Things before this time are kind of hazy, but you remember a latch-key, and snowman-building, and Cracker Jack-like snack with an odd little Japanese prize in it.) It was fine, then.

Then you left it all behind, for California, America. Come to think of it, you never did mail your teacher that postcard of Niagara Falls.

You remember arriving at the new house in a fog; you remember meeting pet dogs for the first time in your life. You remember your youthful incredulity when the folks tell you there's actually a TV channel that plays cartoons all day. So you develop the habit of drawing a villain of each afternoon Fox Kids program, until you're making weekly collages. School's a bit of a change, though. While the other kids do their worksheets, they give you a piece of paper to draw on, since you can't read the words, yet. (Years later you would go on to become the top of the English class, four years straight.) They gawk a little at your pink tracksuit, but somehow you get along okay. There's a cute blond girl, whom you fancy, but as fate would have it a car accident sweeps her away before the year's up.

English comes easier to you after a summer computer class. Steadily you develop a reputation; schoolwork's down pat, no acting up, and you're so quietly composed, so mature, that your parents have no trouble taking you anywhere. In fifth grade there's an instance when you melodramatically compose a handwritten note to what you thought was a romantic rival in jealousy. In some perplexing way that's been lost to time, it's read as hate speech, and you receive a demerit for the first time in a long time. It wasn't much, but it was the worst they could do for your record in fifth grade; frantic, you show up to your music class in tears.

Little did you know, it was the last time you would be honest of your own accord for years to come.

TBC