Why am I considered a cheap bastard by her friends if the engagement ring I got her is almost the price of a small diamond solitaire and it's what she wanted?

subsequent · 9 months

As has been said, even in the 80's our town was still much like the 50s'/60s' representation in the Sandlot:

We lived on our Huffy ten speeds. We loved switching gears for no reason. The highest gear hardly helped getting up the gnarliest hill, so we walked the bikes up, but getting down made it worthwhile.

We had a local watering hole, a clearing in the trees where a crick running through the woods paused, polished rocks on the bottom and small fish that we caught among the reeds and a rope swing our brothers before us had put up. We'd camp out sometimes next to the water and scare each other with stories.

Our mothers still hung laundry out back to dry in the sun-my house had these two posts about thirty feet apart and wires running between and there's just something about a giant sheet blowing in the breeze in the middle of a large grass lawn sprinkled with dandelions that compels a kid to run into said sheets or in between them.

Pine cones - the most versatile of implements for your pretend war with the cootie contingent. Imagine a pine cone is a hand grenade and also imagine the gory aftermath after you bite the top off and toss it at the feet of the puzzled, hair clipped, dazzle shirted Charlie in your sights.

I don't know how many times we tried to light small ineffectual fires with magnifying glasses and Indian bows, but I do remember the handful of times we succeeded. Also, how many times we made our own bows and arrows and slingshots. Or just lay on somebody's lawn until we got bored or were chased away, laying there blowing the seeds off dandelion globes or popping their buds into the air, way too much time staring at the sky scrolling by, looking near the sun.

Epic games of water gun/nerf wars in the summer, snowball fights in the winter. There was this embankment that was perfect for rolling down and in the summer we'd paste it with slip N slides and in the winter we'd ride sleds and rubber trash can lids down it.

When it stormed, your mom made you put your galoshes and rain gear on. The water coming down the concrete gutter made a perfect channel for the testing of a wax paper boat or leaf boat, or you could just stick a galoshed foot in and watch the water flute around your foot like crazy glass patterns as the fallen leaves and debris went by into the storm drain.

Tree forts, you betcha. Clubhouses, a rope or tire swing and a tree good for climbing in almost every yard, dim wood paneled basements and rec rooms where you played pong or made cushion forts. Catching bugs and honey bees and lightning bugs and just cool insects in jars with holes in the lid. The local pool surrounded by chainlink and school yard politics.

We didn't have a sandlot, though, but we had large field with soft, shin high grass that would be used for impromptu games of anything.

For the curious, our old neighborhood is now the location of a high end outdoor style shopping complex. I visited with my girlfriend and we ate at the Cheesecake Factory and got a couple of lattes at the B&N Starbucks.

subsequent · 9 months

I moved here when I was very young, but before we even settled in, the first place we went to was Epcot Center in Disney World. I thought that all American cities had big soaring causeways that went through buildings, that American cars drove themselves, that there were American nuclear families living in outer space, and that America had, not just colonies on the moon and all over the solar system, but also at the closest star, and that the leader of NASA was Micheal Jackson.

cssforlife · 12 months

You generally have to make your own fun. Usually, this involves buying a lot of liquor from ABC and getting friends together.

I don't know. Most activities to do here are best with good friends and involve liquor, the cloak of night, guns and ammunition and local fauna (not that way perv). If you've never gone drunk cow tippin, well, there's a first time for everything (before you hurt yourself trying, most, if not all, cow tippins are only attempted cow tippins, the drunk part makes it fun - or the tricking unwary friends into getting chased by enraged bulls part).

Also, you can get drunk/wasted and paddle an inflatable raft through the unlit creek near the Natatorium. We used to do this often and one time a fish jumped right out of the pitch black into my swim trunks. Scared the bejesus out of me. Another time we forgot the pump and attached the raft to the exhaust of one of our trucks. Bad idea when we got to the middle of the lake drunk and high on carbon monoxide and spent the next three hours drifting on our backs and imagining the moon was a half eaten Mallomar.

sweetcircus · 1 year

Virtual PC, RDP, IE 8

What do I do, what are my political leanings, and how much do I make?

zenfest · 1 year

Found it. University Baptist Child Development Center. Actually, it wasn't a bad time. I didn't remember being proselytized to that much, no scars, etc. which is what I meant. That all we had to do were musicals and snack time and play in the halls so I did not get a strong religious sense from my time there.

zenfest · 1 year

Nope. I go back every once in a while though.

zenfest · 1 year

We lived just off of Jordan Ln for a while, where the old Wal-Mart used to be.

Funny thing, my parents sent me to after school care at the big Church on top of the Jordan Lane hill. I remember getting into a fight with this tall, lanky kid that always wanted to fight me for some reason. Another time I busted my head open at that church because I was running backwards and had to get twenty stitches on the top of my head. At home my mom put me to sleep on the couch in my tightie whities and when I woke up and opened my eyes, this girl down the street that I liked was looking down at me (this was like twenty years before Venture Bros, lol) because my parents thought it would comfort me to see her so they just sent her in.

My time at that church culminated in this play they had us kids do where we were supposed to be Jesus' flock singing about his goodness. They dressed us up in giant T-shirts and made us glue cotton balls to ourselves so we looked like sheep. Then we had to get up on the Church's stage in front of like two hundred people and lip sync to this tape. I'm not really all that religious as a result possibly of my time there, lol.

zenfest · 1 year

I would not say that. There is a certain level of pride, but it almost seems born of a desperate need to rationalize circumstances. Also, it could come from a generation or two of brain washing from exploitative coal companies and corrupt business interests and local government.

zenfest · 1 year

We have flouridated water like the rest of the country. You'd only have a gummy maw in the parts that might still rely on well water and no access to dental care, which is rare in North Alabama.

zenfest · 1 year

Yeah, I don't know if this is why my parents socialized me with other Chinese kids on the weekends, or if they were just addicted to parlor style Mahjong. I think it was more of the latter but it worked out so that I don't really feel awkward in either Chinese or middle class non-Chinese settings. Now if I were on the streets of Pomona, I'd probably get my ass beat.

zenfest · 1 year

There are too many local strongholds of power that have historically kept investment out and it's just been institutionalized to such a degree that it's affected the populace in a negative way. Certain perceptions get passed down from generation to generation, such as the worthlessness or impossibility of getting an education. Almost a pride in living near the bone and in anti-intellectualism and a senseless conservatism. How do we help them? I have no idea.

Exalted81 · 1 year

How is this new and meant to allow people to break out of their perspective? This is a standard trope in science fiction and encountered all the time if you watch Star Trek.

Maybe if they were billions of years old and had harnessed the energy from whole Galaxies and had become beings of pure energy or lived entire lives in increments of time or conversed in spectrum of communication we can't even fathom because of a naturalistic difference. Beyond that, I feel humans have stepped over a threshold that allows them understanding of many modes and varieties of life that might arise, and a creativity that could conceive of new modes, and the tools to understand just about anything and to basically self evolve into anything their creative minds might come up with. In other words, we have the ability to span whatever 1% he's talking about.

zenfest · 1 year

Actually, it was in elementary school when the incident occurred. I was just learning English. University Place next to UAH.

For a while we moved out west and lived in Madison, then my parents moved back to the SE side of town when I was a teenager so I could go to Grissom.

For a while I was slated to go to Bob Jones High School. For those non HSV people this is nowhere close to being affiliated with Bob Jones University.

zenfest · 1 year

Nope, a lack of any accent that they attribute to American Born Chinese. That laugh politely and pat me on the head and tell me I'm doing a good job. Otherwise they are astonished at how good it is.

zenfest · 1 year

Grissom. You?

zenfest · 1 year

Not that deep south. You're thinking south Bama or Florida Swamp.

Instead imagine Truman Capote speaking without the slight gay lisp (technical term).

zenfest · 1 year

No.

I mean, sure, there was your odd jackass and the word chink was thrown around in school by kids who didn't know any better, but about enough times to count on my two hands. Also, the slant eye pull, but it did not work well on me as my eyes are big and round and I have an eyelid fold.

I remember once just trading insults with this kid had both a mullet and a rat-tail (don't ask me how that works) until the thing devolved into racism and he called me a chink and I called him a inbred white-trash redneck and implied he slept with his sister. Odd thing was this asshole was the son of engineers while one of my best white friends growing up lived in a trailer park.

Heck, in middle school me and this other Korean kid just started calling each other chink for fun, until one of the white kids told on us and the teachers made us stop. He was later one of the kids that came over to my parent's basement to get high and listen to Zep and play D&D. Chinky became a way to describe the things you did with Chinese friends as apart from the stuff you did with others.

For the first few years I went to a mixed white/black school. I started here and had almost no language skills but was outgoing and always wanted to learn. So this black kid teaches me a version of jingle bells with Granny and shotgun shells, containing the word nigger and ending with "Shoulda seen him run." Now where a 5 year old black kid learned that song might indicate the harsh reality blacks still had to face then and maybe today, don't know.

I think he was trying to get me beaten up or in trouble because by the end of the day I was singing it everywhere until a black teacher that had taken a shine to both me and my brother stopped me and tried as best as she could to explain to me why it was wrong and ended up discretely talking to my mom when she came to pick me up.

We encountered curiosity more than anything. Glances that sometimes led to inquisitive conversation from those local to the area, and mostly in the periphery of the city. It was common enough to encounter Asians in South East and East side of Hville, heck most people's kids probably went to school with them.

Other than that, all the other instances of racism were positive stereotyping, and people seeking to be "unique". At Grissom HS if you were an Asian girl you were a guy magnet. There was also some cachet there in making a lot of Asian friends that some non-Asians were attracted to.

I sat at lunch with a pretty broad spectrum of ethnicities, Indian, Pakistani, German, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, local. Also, I was possibly one of the better looking Asian guys. Read: relatively tall and in track and cross until junior and senior year when I started getting in to the weights and supplements. To the chagrin of many Chinese mothers I dated only white, Indian and Korean girls (there was this weird sister dynamic that got in the way with a lot of the Chinese chicks).

zenfest · 1 year

My Saturn V, that's what I'm talking bout.

zenfest · 1 year

Yep, the Redstone Arsenal is probably still one of the biggest single employers besides NASA. I think my parents still have a credit union account there.

zenfest · 1 year

I can, with little effort, completely sound like your standard Midwestern "non-accent" English speaker.

zenfest · 1 year

Some seem to be, but this is just like anywhere else. Even in Mass I met some pretty stupid people. While the average level of education can't be compared to concentrated areas like Cambridge/MIT, it compares favorably to many tech centers, like Austin or Seattle.

I grew up around engineers and scientists. Even my non Asian friends had parents who mainly worked for the companies in Cummings Research Park (yeah yeah, get your laughs in) so everything from Teledyne to United Space Alliance to Raytheon. My peewee soccer coach had PHDs in aerospace engineering and artificial intelligence.

Likewise, the two major high schools in Hville and Madison were Blue Ribbon schools. Each year they fielded competitive teams in the supercomputing contest at the NCSA in Urbana Champaign. The vibe is a little Eureka-like, at least in my limited experience.

zenfest · 1 year

Yeah, my impression of Montgomery wasn't all that great. Going south was like going back in time.

zenfest · 1 year

So, by current census estimates, just in Huntsville there are probably over 3800 Asian peeps. Not bad for a city of 170K.

lily918 · 1 year

She said she was born and raised in.

zenfest

TROPHY CASE

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login