Memory Lane

Memory Lane

This is probably one of the few times in my life I have actually stood in front of a camera with just a swim-suit. Even then, as you can see, I was a bit self-conscious. I mean, just look at that gut! Just kidding. I wasn't chunky at all as a child. This photo was taken when I was about 4. I can tell, because my brother's still in diapers, but walking in the photos taken here. This is when we used to live in Bellflower, CA, a bit south of Los Angeles for you non-Californians. I spent my early years here, and even attended kindergarten. My best friend at the time was a gal named Kelly. She lived in the same neighborhood, and it was a really nice neighborhood. Apartments, but kind of in a gated community, without the gates(no need for gates, as it was an extremely safe area) and apartments were only two stories high, and there were a bunch of these almost-house-like buildings. Each building housed four families, to my knowledge. There was also this Indian girl, who taught me how to tie my shoelaces. She was very smart. I wonder where both of these girls are now.

These two photos are my favorite photos of myself and my brother. It seems like he's always had a bigger head than I had, although he's three years younger than I am. I would gaze at these photos for hours, sometimes, and wonder how this little baby boy shot up to be over six feet tall. And he's no where as chubby as he was as a baby -- he's skinny as a stick.

I am SUCH a dork, and the dorkiness is evident even in my youth. What AM I doing?

I swear, I am not screwing over Hawaii! This was taken when my family went to Hawaii. It was the only time I've been there, and I recall nothing from it. I should be about 4 or possibly 5.

I remember getting mad at my brother for blowing out the candles with me. It was my birthday (as indicated by the paper tiara) and I was supposed to blow them out by myself! I remember getting pissed.

I know it's really hard to see, but the girl with the pink cotton candy looking thing on her head is yours truly. I was the clumsiest and the most forgetful child in the universe (I used to leave the umbrella at school and walked home in the rain without realizing that I had brought an umbrella at all, then get yelled at by my mom for forgetting the umbrella, and walk back to school in the rain to get it), and my mom was extremely fretful that I'd get lost at the amusement park and become an orphaned child and get adopted to a foreign country. The occasion was for Children's Day in Korea, May 5th. This is in the second grade, possibly third, because the girl sitting next to me was my best friend and next door neighbor at the time, and she moved next door when I was half way through the second grade. She was my age, and we became very good friends, and kept in touch until I was about 16, when she moved from Korea to Canada. Our piano teacher took us and a few other kids to the amusement park.

Here is a group photo -- I'm again the one with the giant pink ribbon. The kid on the very right is... my brother. You have to realize that we were, by this age, already excellent piano players. I remember going to a competition, and won the gold trophy. My brother and the nextdoor bestfriend-at-the-time girl got silver trophies. We recently tossed away the trophies because they were gathering tooooooo much dust on the fire place in our old apartment, and we don't even have a fire place any more, so we threw it out. My mom still has the paper certificate though, as she still has all the certificates we got when we were in our elementary school years.

This is the Christmas pageant at a Catholic church I used to attend. This is proof that I can show people who tell me that I don't want to go to church because I don't know the church. People. Please. I know the church well enough to play the Virgin Mary at the church Christmas pageant. Anyhoot, I recall the kids making fun of me and the kid who played Joseph, and obviously, a scandal occurred, where we were rumored to be dating. Reminder: I was 8! I actually think the Joseph kid had some sort of crush on me, because when I told people that he was too short, he got really mad and upset. But look at the photo -- I'm towering over him!

Here's a photo of old Joseph, looking important with his fake, glitter-covered staff. I'm, of course, looking very demure and holy, with a giant baby doll with a halo. I recall that day as a blur -- and it's not just because it was so long ago when I was young. Never ever, in human history, was the Virgin Mary played by a girl with glasses. Never. Actually, it happened because of spite. This girl wanted to play Mary, but she had really short cropped hair. One of those pixie cuts, I assume. She even argued that she had a white dress to wear, if she was to play Mary. Well, my best friend at the time insisted that the Virgin Mary cannot, absolutely cannot have short hair, and that I should play her because I had long hair at the time. (Ignore the ultra short bangs my mom cut herself -- she cut bangs and she saw that it was good -- too bad the daughter hated them.) The Sundayschool teacher agreed and said that I should play Mary, and that cropped-hair girl should loan me the dress. Then she argued that Virgin Mary did not wear glasses. So I simply had to remove them for the pageant, and was damn close to being legally blind on stage, which could have turned out hazardous, but fortunately, didn't. I mean, I was already unpopular -- if I tripped or dropped Baby Jesus, I would have been condemned!

So those are some more photos of my childhood, up to when I was 8. You know, this is actually very sad. My childhood was actually quite affluent -- not so much when I started school, but we had so many vacations and so many photos taken as a family. When I turned 9, my family moved to the US. The only vacation we went on was a day trip to San Diego to visit Sea World. There's actually very very few photos of me after I turned 9. There was little reason to take pictures. When I first started elementary school here, I thought we had to buy the school photos. So I have one from every year, until I found out that we don't have to buy them. So I didn't have any photos for a few years, until I hit Junior high and had to order a few to give out to friends. But after that, there are very little photos.

The one occassion where my family was gathered to take photos was at my high school graduation. Since my Dad left the States four months after I graduated, it would have been my final photos with my dad, ever. But as luck would have it, my graduation photos came out ALL BLACK. So I have absolutely NO PICTURES from my high school graduation -- I have a few from grad night at Disneyland, but none of the actual ceremony. So these baby photos, taken from a period of my life I can't recall, are precious to me. So now that I have a digital camera, I try to take self photos, even if they're geeky. If I were to die today, I would want a recent photo for family and friends to remember me by. Gee, that's kinda morbid.