Life during my early school years were mostly full of promise. Not just for myself but for my parent’s relationship as well. It seemed things might actually get better for everyone. Having kids kept them too busy to fight. And they were excited with how their kids were turning out.
Preschool & Kindergarten (age 4-5)
I was a smart kid, and a good kid.
I know it because my parent said so. Hahaha. But looking back, I remember many little actions I did that helped to convince them. One of them being when my little brother asked me what a certain number looked like and I drew it in the air with my finger, but backwards so that he would see it in the correct way. My dad was really impressed by that.
I was also very quick to learn the rules. Whatever rules my parents gave me, I followed perfectly. Never doubting or faltering. No candy, no peeing the bed, I ate all my food quickly, I put my toys away. I was a reliable oldest son. I was a good boy.
A child with common sense.
When I reached preschool and kindergarten. All my teachers pointed out to my parents how smart I was. I was becoming bilingual (Vietnamese & English), enjoyed playing with books, could write words and numbers legibly, and knew how household things worked without having to be explained to. Honestly, I don’t think I seemed all that special. I just had more common sense or earlier than some of the other kids. I wasn’t like a child prodigy playing the piano and reading medical books at age 5.
But to my parents, I was the most incredible thing they’d ever seen. They really felt I was as smart as any. And they had such high hopes and expectations for me. They weren’t exactly the stereotype of the “Asian tiger mom” but they did in fact wish for me to become a doctor. It makes sense when you know their background in Asia. Where people walked home from work in the streets wearing their work uniform. And doctors had the most respect since they were so visible. It wasn’t just about the money and the education, it was the IMAGE of success.
A somewhat trilingual upbringing
My household spoke Vietnamese and that was my first language. First words as a child was Vietnamese. But everybody else in our house and neighborhood spoke Spanish. And I only ever heard English at schools (although many kids in my schools spoke only Spanish as well). So I was quite familiar with all 3 languages even I didn’t speak them all.
It was when I reached kindergarten (age 5) and first grade (age 6) that I started to hear much more English at school and took that back home where my parents themselves were also working on their English. But in the house and with my parents, I spoke Vietnamese at this time. My brothers were a bit younger (Brian 3.5 years younger, Harry 5 years younger) and weren’t at true speaking capacity yet.
The back house tenants.
Some years after our house was finished renovated, my dad along with the help of some workers built a small house in our back yard and rented that out as well. It was built from scratch…plumbing, framing, roofing, electrical, insulation, flooring, tiling, drywall, and painting. There’s a cute picture of me when I was 4 barely lifting a shovel trying to help my dad.
After it was built, it was rented to a Mexican family with 2 kids…Raphael (7 years older than me) and Diana (2 years younger than me). Parents names were Carlos & Ana Castillo. There’s also a cute picture of me standing over Diana (as she was in a walker) and kissing her on the cheek. This picture sat above my parent’s bedroom TV for over 10 years.
Dogs & death
I probably developed a real love for dogs at this age. (What kid doesn’t? They are cute and loving playmates for kids.) My father loved dogs too for their affection and loyalty. It was always his dream to have dogs, but he claimed to always have bad luck for them.
Nearly all the dogs we ever had somehow kept dying…usually being run over by a car. Which was quite strange since they were often street dogs (with street smarts) that followed my father home from his jobs. It also didn’t help that our neighborhood was quite lawlessly, many cars driving fast around the neighborhood for whatever reason.
The 2 most notable dogs from my early years:
- Big golden dog “Lassie” – I have a really cute picture with him, where he sat next to me and was taller than me. He got hit by a car and died. I vaguely remember my dad going, “Ughhh…not this again…while carrying his body to the dumpster.”
- Small black dog “Bonnie” – cute small black dog (curly hair) that we had as a puppy. He was still young. One day my dad was fixing something in the front of the house when he ran across the street chasing a balloon. At this moment my dad heard a car coming and called him back, “BONNIE!” But it was a mistake. The dog had already crossed the street safely but then ran back because my dad called him. In crossing back, the car ran him over.
One day I asked, “Meaaa…Bonnie uhhh daooo” (phoneticized Vietnamese) and she replied, “Bonnie chet roi.” (also phoneticized Vietnamese). I asked, “Mom, where’s Bonnie?” and she replied, “Bonnie died.”
I didn’t know what dying meant so I asked and she explained “dying” meant when someone (a person or animal) goes away for a long time and never comes back. Comically…for years after, me and my brothers often asked our parents, “Hey….did ____ die?” when we hadn’t seen someone for a while. And they’d have to correct us, “NO! He’s at work, etc.” and also clarify that it’s rude and nonsensical to ask if someone died.
Mine and Brian’s first porno magazine.
As kids, we quickly learned that all the good and most interesting things to be found were always high up. It’s where the adults always put things they didn’t want kids to find. Usually above refrigerators or in the cabinets as far away from the ground as possible.
So quickly learned to explore high up every time we found a new environment. Whatever new room or new house we were in, we quickly tried to pull out chairs and climb up and to look on top of things.
One day we saw a refrigerator thrown on the street so guess what we did. We found a chair and then climbed up to look on top of the fridge. And we were right! We found an adult magazine!!!
Only, we didn’t understand what it was. It looked like adults playing “horsey” in funny black leather costumes. But we were fascinated anyway. We sat quietly on the front porch flipping through it.
My mom had a hunch something was wrong when she didn’t hear any sound from us for 2 hours. She came out and found us with the magazine…ahhh there you are! And what are you looking at?! She told us never to look at those kinds of things again. That they were not for kids.
My developing protective instincts.
I remember it started when I was 5 years old and my mother said she was going to pierce my newborn brother Harry’s ear. I asked how she was going to do it and she said with a pen. She was just going to stab his ear all the way through and that it would be easy since his ear was soft. I had never seen an ear-piercing get done but I instinctively knew I didn’t like it.
When she took him inside the bedroom and locked the door, I pounded on it to stop. As I heard my baby brother crying louder and louder, I cried too and screamed at her to stop. Finally after a few minutes, it was done and the door was opened and I could go see him. As we all know…this won’t be the last time I tried to protect my brother/s.
First grade (age 6)
Starting grade school in the ghetto.
When I reached first grade, my parents had initially put me into the nearby elementary school called Union Elementary School (5 minutes walk from our house). To be short…it was very ghetto, just like the neighborhood. 100% ethnic kids…nearly all latin, and then some blacks and asians. White people didn’t dare put their kids in these schools.
After all…our neighborhoods are full of gangs and danger. And to be a minority white kid in a school like this was pretty much a death wish. Drug dealers stood around the gates outside when the school ended (either selling drugs or picking up their kids, or both). Kids got into fights all the time in the bathrooms or on the basketball courts. Kids played carrom (indian version of pool) after school like pool hustlers.
Racism in the ghetto.
Not much imagination required here. I was a minority Asian kid among many hispanic kids. As soon as they were old enough to talk, the teasing came in. Kids made mocking “ching-ching” sounds and pulled their eyes back all the time at me. Even when my mother was there, even when both of our mothers were there. My mom never bothered to say anything. She was probably already used to it and simply told me not to mind them.
Growing up in this environment, I quickly distinguished “nice people” from “mean people” simply by who made racist jokes or not. They could be murderers or drug dealers but if they didn’t make Asian jokes or mocking signs at me, I considered them “nice”.
Playing in a castle.
I can’t remember if I was 4 or 6 years old when this happened. My dad sometimes took me with him when he went to hang out with friends at the coffee shop. And he would just let me play by myself unsupervised, while his mind was on his friends.
One day, I just decided to wander around the building. I went all the way to the back of the building and there in the grass by the trees on a dirty side street, I found a castle! No….not a real medieval kind, made of stone. I’m talking about the cardboard box kind, made by kids.
But this one was made a homeless person. Of course, I didn’t know any better. I crawled around inside anyway and looked over at all his toys. A broken clock/radio. A porno magazine (oooh). And some other random things that didn’t make sounds, or lights, that weren’t fun to play with. I got bored after half an hour and tried to come back to my dad. Except only I was disoriented now and couldn’t exactly remember which direction he was.
An hour or two later I found him. I was relieved to find him, and also relieved that he didn’t notice anything (and that I wasn’t in trouble for getting lost). A bit terrifying for a young boy but I was getting more and more used to be alone and lost in the world.
Switching to the “gifted” school program (MAGNET).
I don’t know what happened first. Whether my parents saw the school and said to the teachers, “Oh hell no…we gotta get Johnny outta here.” Or my teacher at Union saw me and told my parents, “Oh hell no…we gotta get Johnny outta here.” But some paperwork was done and I was transferred from Union Elementary School to another school just 5 blocks further down…called Betty Plasencia Elementary School (or “Plasencia” for short).
Plasencia had something called a MAGNET program. A program by the L.A.U.S.D. (Los Angeles Unified School District) for gifted kids. And kids in this program would be placed into special classes with better teachers, and harder curriculum. The long run benefit would be a better education, having your kids alongside other gifted kids (instead of normal kids or bad/street kids), better preparation for college, more scholarship opportunities, and perhaps preferential treatment in college applications.
Looking back…I’d say any kid not in the MAGNET program had almost zero chance of escaping the ghetto. Which was absolutely tragic considering maybe only 5% of any school’s students were in the MAGNET program.
Schools in the ghetto
First recess at Plasencia.
In American schools, “recess” and “lunch” are the break periods where kids can get food and go play. In a ghetto school…that’s when the playground and bathrooms turn into an absolute warzone. A jungle of madness especially if it’s your first day and you haven’t made friends yet. You very quickly learn the unspoken rules of recess and inner-city public schools.
- RULE #1 – don’t shit at school.
I learned this the hard way…I had to go number two. And so during recess, I went to the bathroom.
What I saw there was the craziest thing I had ever seen in my life at that point. When I first entered the bathroom…I saw a land without rules. First off, the whole floor was flooded. Like 2-3cm high of water and piss (sometimes even higher). It’s almost ALWAYS like that. Kids are clogging the drain holes and letting water run or something. Many felt rebellious just by pissing on the floor instead of in the urinal.
Secondly, there are all kinds of mischief going on there. You saw circles of boys fighting. Other boys were wetting all the paper towels and throwing them against the wall. There was also some bullying going on. Like 3 on 1, or 5 on 1. Some boys even carried pencils and pens in their hand like it was a knife. Looking back…it reminds me an awful lot like those chaotic prison scenes that you see in movies. But just like the 6-10 year boys version.
Now for the best part. The toilets. The bathroom is built like a donut. On the outer walls are all the urinals. And on the inner walls are the toilet stalls. But here’s the thing…ALL of the toilet stalls (except for one) did not have a stall door. So you cannot poop…because everyone can see you there. And you’re absolutely vulnerable. Anybody who dared tried to poop would be messed with. They’ll throw wet paper towels, empty water bottles, or trash at you. Or just harass you anyway that they can. Besides…there’s never any toilet paper there anyway…the boys always destroy all the toilet paper and paper towels.
So what about that ONE TOILET that has a stall door? Well, you’re not safe in that one either. Because the wall behind the toilets doing go all the way up to the ceiling. It goes to like 2 meters high and forms a platform right in the middle of the bathroom. And at any given moment, there are always at least 1 or 2 boys standing on the platform and yelling commands at everyone and harassing. Even if you tried to poop in the closed stall, the boys on the platform will harass you. The worse ones may even try to piss down on you while you’re shitting. Everybody else will throw shit in at you and laugh.
I saw one manage to successfully poop. Here’s how he did it, he came in with 2-3 of his friends. As he pooped, 2 of his friends guarded the door and did their best to prevent anybody from throwing stuff in. The 3rd one was literally challenging and threatening the platform kid.
So here I was…and I’m like OH GOD NO, NO WAY IN HELL AM I SHITTING HERE. So I leave the bathroom and I try to find other bathrooms in the school. All of them are terrible…like the other ones are even scarier because they have different sets of kids ruling their territory and those bathrooms are dark. So I thought I was clever, I decided to just wait until we go back to class time and then ask to go to the bathroom. And it’s exactly what I did.
I asked to go to the bathroom during class and Mrs. Hunt gave me a hall pass. I go to the crazy bathroom and peeked around. Omg, the jungle was safe. Not a single person in there! Dead quiet. I see lock the stall door and sit down, about to do my business. And right as I start…I hear the bathroom door swing open and the sunlight swept across the bathroom walls (like a guard light in a prison). I immediately thought, “OH NO, OH NO!” My heart raced as I heard multiple sets of footsteps come in.
And then I heard a loud kid voice go “Heyyyyy….SOMEONE’S TAKING A SHIT!” I wanted to die right there, I was so scared. My stall door shook a bit as they tried to open it. And then I heard them go into the stall next to me and some scuffling noises. (They were climbing up the wall of the stall next to me.) I heard a “HEY!” from up above and when I looked up, I saw 2 heads looking back down at me from over the stall door. 2 third graders, a white boy “Walter” and black boy “Dwight”. One pointed at me and said, “You’re taking a shit!” And the other one hocked and spit down at me. His big spit wad landed on the side of my left butt cheek. Then they laughed and ran off.
Pretty traumatizing. I think I’ve only shit in a public school maybe 3 times in my life (for grades 1 to 12). If ya don’t know…now ya know!
Being “gifted” in the ghetto.
Now I will say…”gifted” in a ghetto neighborhood doesn’t mean the same thing as in a normal neighborhood. In normal neighborhoods, “gifted” means like super smart, exceptional thinking ability, otherworldly mental talents.
But in the ghetto, the label “gifted” is handed out to a much lower standard. “Gifted” could just mean that you have parents that care about your education, that you know how to read, that you do your homework and actually want to go to college.
- In the ghetto, “gifted” doesn’t mean “extraordinarily smart and talented”.
- It’s more like “isn’t stupid, isn’t a gangster, and has the best chance of escaping the ghetto and going to college”.
Basically that your family is only poor, but they aren’t ghetto.
This is an important distinction to make as my parents loved reminding us that we aren’t like the rest of the poor Mexicans/latinos/blacks in our neighborhoods. Yes, we were poor and in a really bad neighborhood, and also on welfare (social aid for poor families). But we weren’t ghetto. We had class.
And also that back in Vietnam, our parents families had some money and even some servants (and housecleaner/babysitter) in the house. My dad’s family was certifiably middle class (with big house and owned businessess) but my mother’s family was more like poor (and then had even poorer people as servants). The Mexican kids however, their families were even more poor back in Mexico.
Escaping the ghetto
Because the reality of the ghetto was very sad. Only 25% of high school kids (if they even make it to high school) will graduate. And even fewer of those will make it college, and even fewer will even graduate college with a university degree. I’d say only 10% of my high school freshman got a university degree.
What happens to the rest?
- Gangs, which lead to death or incarceration (go to jail). You could also die by gangs without being in one.
- Girls often had teenage pregnancy, and had to leave school to become a mom.
- Dealing drugs and/or substance abuse with drugs or alcohol…cuz life is hard in the ghetto.
- End up working a dead-end job. This was often the best case scenario for kids in the ghetto. Just growing up to be a law-abiding citizen that didn’t bother anyone, and working an honest job for an honest pay.
The only way to escape the ghetto was usually…get a degree and make money, become an athlete or singer/actor, join the military (which then gives you college money). Or if you’re a pretty girl (and didn’t talk too ghetto), maybe you could marry some rich guy.
The track system in inner-city schools.
This is actually a fun fact for many people who don’t know how school systems are run in crowded inner-city school districts. For my European friends reading this…urban or “inner-city” are labels used to describe impoverished crowded bad neighborhoods in the big cities. Another street term we might also use is “hood”, which is a ghetto way of saying “neighborhood”. I’m sure you hear it in American pop culture and rap music videos like…”in the hood”…or “my hood”…or “back in the hood”, etc.
Anyway, the “track system” is what they use to make space for over-crowded schools. For example…my high school had 7,000 students. Which is freaken massive. That’s similar to even some smaller universities.
But the school only had the capacity for 1,500 students. So how do they do it? First they crowd the classrooms, so a room built for 15 now holds 30 or even 60 students. You can’t have computers for each kid, everybody takes turns. They also build bungalows (makeshift rooms) on campus to make additional “classrooms”. But still, it’s not enough…
They use the “track system”:
- You split the school into 3 tracks. For example…A, B, and C.
- Every kid that enrolls in the school is sent to one of the tracks. Either A, B, or C.
- And the school only has 2 tracks on at any given moment, and 1 track off. Switching every 2 months.
- So for example…Jul and Aug (B & C), Sep and Oct (A & B), Nov and Dec (A & C).
And like this…you can fit more students into every school.
My parents gave me a boost at home.
My parents started teaching me harder math earlier on. Which looking back, isn’t so hard. They already knew how to do multiplication and division (as all adults do) and taught it to me as a 6-year old. So I was the only 1st grader in my class who could do 4th grade math. And everyday at school, when it was time for math…my teacher would send me across the hall to do math with the 4th graders. This pattern would later continue when I was 2nd grade and doing math in the 5th grade class.
My mother also had me trace her handwriting so that mine looked better. She would write every letter and number in pencil, multiple times in a notebook. Just imagine like a page of A’s, another page of B’s, and so on. And I had to retrace her penciled handwriting with a pen before I could go out and play. Thanks to this, I had a really pretty and easily readable “girl’s handwriting” by age 5. My homework assignments always stood out to my teachers because my handwriting was so much nicer than the ugly chicken scratched turned in by all the other boys.
My father was also a big believer in books. He felt anyone could educate their way out of poverty via books. Often citing famous stories of homeless people who started reading books in a public library, and then got a job as a lawyer/doctor or became millionaires somehow. He loved to bring random books home (either purchased, found in the trash, garage sales, or the houses where he worked).
The early home coaching helped me score extremely well on standardized tests. They usually test intelligence via math & reading capabilities and I was scoring exceptionally high. The top 1% percentile in America in math and like 93% in reading comprehension. The numbers mostly stayed this way until I reached college.
The child prodigy was well on its way. As the prophet foretold.
My parents couldn’t be more excited to have me as a son. I was smart, good listener, and seemed to go along with everything they wanted me to be. My teachers likewise were very happy to have me in their class. And the teachers from the older grades had already heard about me as well. They too were excited to have “the genius kid” soon entering their class.
My parents really thought they lucked out seeing me fit their oldest son fantasies. I was gonna be that perfect first son, smart and money-making doctor, pride and perfect image of the family.
They already knew it was going to happen because an old chinese fortune teller had told them so (when I was just a newborn). I had a big ear lobe (considered a symbol of good luck in Chinese culture, and my prophecy said I would become very prosperous). He also said many other things too, but I’ll explain that later.
- In a quote that would echo forever for the rest of my life….“This baby’s life will blossom endlessly every year after age 18.”