Youth: Part 3. High School

 Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without one.   -- Chinese Proverb

Joel the nerd comic artist

I met Joel in class and we became friends. He was a smart nerd, being a chess club member and math team member. We hung out together during free class period and sometimes played chess. One day, I beat him in chess. Major upset. It was such a shock to him and to me. He got a little mad and I was happy as a clam.   

Joel was also an eccentric nerd. He looked like a cartoon character, short, bow-legged, long hair that curled behind his ears and silver braces on his teeth. But, the main common denominator we shared was drawing. 

Joel was a comic artist and he collected comic books. He loved to draw Batman, Spiderman, and other characters. He studied the top comics illustrators and copy them. We would sit in between class comparing our drawings.  It was fun and educational. I learned things from him, too. He told me about the best Batman illustrator of that time, Neal Adams. He showed me the art of comics and how they used creative angles on each page. 

One day he invited me over to his house after school. Joel showed me his comic book collection. It was huge! He had several book cases full of them. Many were wrapped carefully in plastic sleeves to protect them. Some were worth many times the sticker price. 

I told him that I had had an original Silver Surfer comic. He got excited and said, "Wow, that would be worth 90$ in new condition." 

Unfortunately, my comic book was not in new condition. It was well read and used. And I think Mom tried to throw it out. She didn't like comic books. She thought they were silly.   

Cross Country Running and Track

In the Spring semester of 9th grade, my parents encouraged me to try out for outdoor track. It was okay, except that I found out that I was slow and generally not good at anything in particular. The coach let me try every event within reason; 100 meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, 800 meters, long jump, triple jump. I was not particularly good at any of them. In the end, he put me in the 400 meters. There were a bunch of us freshmen so it was a social event. 

In the Fall of 10th grade, I tried Cross Country running. Coach had encouraged me to do it since I was in Spring track. It was a good experience running as a group over the same distances. I ran junior varsity. That year, we had a good varsity team with 2 top runners and a few others behind them. We were one of the better teams in the league. However, there was one town, Acton-Boxboro that beat us early in the season. They were number 1. 

Something happened in the middle of the season. Our three top varsity runners, Lee, Richard, and Geoff went on a hiking camping trip in Maine. During their trip, it rained and the rivers swelled. While crossing one of the fast flowing streams, one runner, Geoff, got his foot stuck in rocks. His companions, Lee and Richard, couldn't pull him out. As the rain soaked them, the stream rose and became a river. The water was too cold for them to stay in rushing stream for very long. In the end, they were unable to save Geoff. He drowned as the water engulfed him. 

On Monday, coach called the whole team together to share the bad news. Lee and Richard recounted what happened and we all cried. We felt terrible and so sad. News of Geoff's death quickly rang through high school. Another runner wrote a poem in memory of Geoff. 

One girl said, "I am so sorry. I had wanted to tell Geoff that I liked him, but I never did." 

On top of that, we had a meet with Acton-Boxboro that week. Coach said he asked Acton to please postpone the meet so that we could grieve and mourn. They agreed. The meet would be rescheduled after the last meet. It would be November by then. 

November came and the day of the postponed meet came. Coach said, "We lost to Acton while running with our number 3 runner Geoff. Now we have to race them without him. We are underdogs. Everyone will need to step up. Let's run for Geoff!" 

On race day, it was cold, grey, and it rained. It was also on our home course. That was one thing to our advantage. Coach always said that a proper cross country course should be off-road and rugged; 1/3 uphill, 1/3 downhill, and 1/3 flat. And our course was a good course. We had a steep climb up a ski slope. We had the "sand pits" which was a huge bowl of a former gravel pit. We had woods. We had grass fields. And we started and finished on our dirt, cinder track. We really liked our course because no other team had one like ours. Other schools tended to have flat grassy courses. Some included roads. Nah, ours was the best. 

In cross country, you score it like golf, low score wins. We ran 10 varsity runners, with 5 scoring in the race. Each place is scored as is. 1st = 1 point. 2nd = 2 points. etc. 

The race began. JV went first. Then varsity. Because I ran JV, I finished and was at the finish as the varsity runners came in. Richard came in 1st, Lee got 3rd. Our other runners got 5th, 7th, and 10th, for a total of 26. Acton got 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th, 9th, for a total of 29. We won! And we won without Geoff, our number 3 runner. But, I like to think that Geoff watched the race from heaven and cheered us on. 

This world demands the qualities of youth; not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease.   ― Robert F. Kennedy

Girls I liked: 9th to 11th grade. The Blonde goddess.

In high school we used to take the school bus which drove through north town and then crossed south to take us to school. At one of the stops there was a girl one year ahead of me. Eliza Beam*. Her real name was Elizabeth, but every one called her Eliza. She was gorgeous and had long golden blonde hair which fell down to her waist. She was athletic, played sports and was in the popular crowd. Everyday on the bus I would glance at her because she was the model of beauty to me. Because she was a year older and hung with her grade, I never had any chance to meet her face to face. I was too intimidated anyways.

During junior year there was the annual School Festival which came on Saturday at the end of academic year. Each time there was the crowning of the Festival Queen. Several girls from the senior class would be nominated to run for queen. Of course, all of these were very pretty. On festival day, the nominees dressed in identical dresses and strolled around the grounds to meet and greet the crowds. The public then voted for who they thought should be queen. Simple popular vote. That year, Eliza won the title of Festival Queen. It rained part of the afternoon so I missed when she was crowned queen. I was sorry. After the festival, Eliza graduated and left town. My dream died.

What did I learn?
I learned that my standard for beauty was influenced by personal experience and by mainstream Western media. And my personal experience was limited to White Suburbia. The only other Asian student in my grade was a Japanese American girl. She wasn't pretty like Eliza. No, Eliza was the standard. I didn't see any others who could compare with her. 

Tall, blond and blue-eyed was the ultimate. That is what I believed through High School. Brainwashed. And because of that, I felt defeated, disillusioned, and emasculated. I hated myself. Yeah, Self hatred. I wished I was someone else.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.  -- Confucius

What could I do?

Recognize and identify the subtle negative influence of media and experience. That is first. In my case, my experience was very limited. I needed to grow. Seek to expand your network of friends to bring balance and a broader view of society and reality. 

If I could tell my high school age Cary, I would say, "You will see more examples of beauty in the future. There is more. You have only seen a little. God celebrates beauty in all peoples of the world. There are beautiful people in other places and cultures. 

What about you? 

Do you idolize others? Think they are more attractive, better, smarter, more creative? Do you think that you have nothing much to offer? Or, do you dislike or hate yourself? Depressed? I have been there. I was confused and desperately wanting to be accepted by the in-crowd. Or by the majority culture. But, I was an outsider. I didn't really belong. I longed to be accepted. I wanted to be invited and welcomed. 

Do not diminish who you are. Your gender, your heritage, your identity. That's what makes you unique.   -- Strong by Kailin Gow.  ― Kailin Gow 

A Wong on TV

One winter weekend, a new Pepsi Cola TV commercial featured freestyle ski Canadian champion Wayne Wong. Soon, his photo appeared on magazine advertisements. Imagine that -- a Chinese Canadian sports champ, suddenly celebrity. 

The Monday after, the school ski team members crowded around me, and asked, "Was that your older brother Steve on TV? Was he in the Pepsi Cola commercial?" They were convinced it was him. Mom was asked too. "Isn't that your son? Wasn't he on TV in that commercial?" After all, it was a Wong. Must be related to us. 

I chuckled inside. It was cute. Wayne Wong presented another picture, a positive athletic model to media. A strong male figure. Something other than the stereotypical Chinese representation on TV. 

What did I learn? 

That I was craving to see someone who looked liked me on TV. All those years I never saw any Chinese or Asian staring on a show, or even an advertisement or commercial. What I saw in the mirror each morning did not match with what I saw every day at school or in media. It woke me up. I wasn't White. Even if I wanted to be. 

Getting my drivers license. 

I learned how to drive a car with standard transmission the hard way, manual transmission on the column. Dad would take me to the local Shopping Center parking lot on Sunday when it was empty and I would practice driving the Ford Fairlane station wagon. 

At first, I had a lot of trouble with the clutch, how to coordinate the gas pedal in the clutch so that the car didn't jerk like a squawking goose. Dad would get a little impatient and of course I was nervous. Can't remember how many times I practiced releasing the clutch. 

But after some weeks I finally reached a point of proficiency in time to take the driving test. It was cold I think November or early December and my mother went with me to the driving test. She remembers more details than I do. 

The main thing that happened was I came to a stop sign and it was on a side street in Framingham on a very slight uphill. I put it into first gear and tried to go forward to turn right. However the car stalled. I restarted the engine and was able to proceed slowly. I passed the test. 

Afterwards we were driving home, mom turned to me and said, "do you realize that when you stalled, you were in second gear? That's why you stalled. But you were able to drive away in second gear." phew. I think I had that little luck, or grace.

So, because I have been driving standard transmission all my life, I've been able to easily adjust to overseas where all the vehicles are manual transmission. Pretty much all. My wife did not learn on standard so I had to teach her how to drive it in Africa. All our vehicles in Africa and Asia have been standard transmission. 

Scott, 12th grade 

One of the families in the neighborhood had gone away for 2 years with the Peace Corps to Malaysia. They had four children, with the oldest a son named Scott. Scott and I were in the same grade. Our families had grown up together in the neighborhood so we knew each other very well. We had played sports and games since elementary school. 

When Scott's family returned to the United States they moved to New York City. Scott wanted to finish high school or at least be at the same school with me because of the tough transition going to New York. He must have pleaded with his parents. 

So Scott's parents and my parents made a special arrangement. Scott could live with us for a school year like an adopted son and he could attend high school with me. The only thing was he lost a school grade while in Malaysia. When he returned, he was placed in 11th grade while I was in 12th grade. 

For the most part, the arrangement worked out well. My parents took Scott in and they treated him like another son. We had an empty bedroom for him because Steve was away at college.
One thing I happened during that school year was how our social lives influenced each other. Scott was more outgoing than me. He made friends with some other people. Or at least he was closer and had closer relationships with them. 

At the end of the school year which was my senior year there was going to be a private party at someone's house while the parents were away. Scott learned about the party and asked me about going. Since I had my driver's license Scott asked me to ask my parents if we could borrow the car that night. Of course I had to say it in a way that would not alarm them. 

The party was held at the house of a classmate named Peter. His parents were away that weekend. There was alcohol being served, beer. Everyone was drinking. This was back in the day when the drinking age was 18. Well, I drank, got very relaxed, and climbed up a tree for fun. Everyone laughed at me and with me. I felt a bit buzzed in my head, so to speak. 

But I think everyone was just having fun. Hey, it was the last senior high school party. 

After the house party everyone drove to a hill in a secluded part of town and walked to the top as a kind of a ritual; a graduation rite of passage. It was very late and dark. The stars were out and we looked into the night sky. it was like looking into the future, looking into our destiny, Life After High School. We stayed there for maybe 20 minutes, then walked back down. Then, everyone dispersed. 

I drove Scott back to our house. Scott was still excited, hooting, hollering and sticking his head out the window. I was sober driving and happy to have been included with the seniors at this party. I felt kind of accepted by the in-crowd. Finally. 

What did I learn?

I learned something about my parents and Scott's parents. That they were close and trusting enough to make a such an intimate arrangement. That Mom and Dad were very, very hospitable to take Scott in for the whole school year. How many parents would do such a thing these days?  

And I learned about Scott. Because of his social skills and his friends, I was able to be included with more people in the senior class. Some so-called popular students. Before then my Social Circle at school was limited to a few of the cross country team and a couple of nerds.  

I learned about myself. That I wanted to be included with certain groups of students. That it would make me feel good about self. Peer pressure. That I was willing to do silly stuff to be with them. Oh, the insecurity.  

I want to learn how to speak to anyone at any time and make us both feel a little bit better, lighter, richer, with no commitments of ever meeting again. 

I want to learn how to stand wherever with whoever and still feel stable. 

I want to learn how to unlock the locks to our minds, my mind, so that when I hear opinions or views that don’t match up with mine, I can still listen and understand. 

I want to burn up lifeless habits of following … concentrated liquids (that) burn my mind and throat and I want to go back to the way nature shaped me. 

I want to learn to go on well with whatever I have in my hands at the moment in a natural state of mind, certain like the sea.  I will find comfort in the rhythm of the sea.
― Charlotte Eriksson