Day 2: The Little Korean Girl with an Afro. My Childhood. (Nude photo included)

Alright, to begin this (ridiculously crazy) endeavor, I've thought long and hard about the topic I want to talk about. (Its very important, I can't start the second post talking about the Vietnam war..those things take time man..I feel like i'm waiting for my blog to grow up first before I start talking about big topics)

I came to the conclusion that I should start at the very beginning.

My childhood.

I had a pretty normal childhood..I think. I lived in the woods of Hackensack, New Jersey until I was five. My house was small, dark brown, with yellow trimming. It was like the 70's threw up all over it. We had wood paneled walls with orange shag carpeting too..groovy.

I rarely saw my parents much. They left really early for work in Staten Island and came home much past my bedtime. I was raised by my strict Korean grandmother, who looked like a much older, female version of my father. I sometimes got confused when they were together. She was the only person I ever had contact with, thus my first language was Korean.

To amuse me, my grandmother would leave the radio on. My young mind was fascinated by the strange sounds and beat. The melodies and rhythm forcing my body to move and starting uncontollable gigglefits. It was wonderful, thus music became the first major love of my life. My dad has several tapes of me dancing around the house...I need to figure out how to make them into digital copies.



my dance moves haven't changed much.

 My grandmother also liked to braid my hair into cornrows. Yes.. Cornrows. Before you all say "nah uh, stop playin' son" My grandmother learned how to do it from one of the customers when we went with my parents to their store. She had already put my hair into tight, braided pigtails like this:

but cornrows were like a whole, nutha level..I think she had nothing better to do

So imagine..a little, Asian girl dancing around in the woods of New Jersey with cornrows..yea.
My parents couldn't stand having to commute 2 1/2 hrs to work each day. They said they were regretting not seeing me grow up...(honestly I think they were starting to get scared when they started seeing me in cornrows and incoherently singing Aerosmith and ABBA songs)

                                    

So my grandmother went back to Korea, while my parents packed up their 1975 Westfalia (OMG, there was a giant needle, freakin 3 inches long., in this cushion I was sitting in...my ass Dx just noooww)and drove to Staten Island..and we never left the Island since...sounds like some B-grade horror movie.

I went to Eltingville Lutheran School from Kindergarden to 8th grade. My parents, in an attempt to make me look like Shirley Temple (I freakin loved her), decided to get me a perm for the first time. Now to a 5 year old..a perm is pretty damn painful..you would think that having your hair done in cornrows from the time you had enough hair, would make you used to the sensation of hair pulled out x10..but no..it was a three hour torture/cry fest. I thought I did something bad so my mom was leaving with this horrible, evil woman to punish me.

When the lady took out the rollers and washed out the chemicals, I didn't prance down from the seat, doing a dance number, with my new, shiny curls (hell, I thought they'd be blond too) bouncing around..no..my hair was the opposite; it was a jet-black, afro that no light could shine on since my hair was so fried...(my dad jokingly blamed it on me watching the Fresh Prince of Bel-air and Family Matters so much with my grandma) It was embarrassing. Luckily I don't remember much from the early years, otherwise I bet they would be traumatic and possibly mentally challenging to live with. I hated that little bitch, Shirley Temple,  and I think this is where my desire to be a white girl began..

I wanted to be a cute, little, white girl with bouncing blond curls..

instead I was a surly, Korean girl with an black afro. Story of my life.

I think I got along pretty well with my classmates, despite the fact that they laughed at my head every time I got within their line of sight. I was really shy and cried easily (Maybe I was sensitive from the Fro fiasco) but I managed to make two good friends, Athena and Carolyn. We were inseparable.

Athena was the only other girl I could identify myself with. Since the majority of my class was made up of white kids, Athena, who is Chinese, became my Asian sistah. How I met Carolyn is a bit of a mystery..I think I forced her to play with me in 2nd grade when Athena stayed home with the flu..and we just stuck. Carolyn was my first white friend, so she was rather fascinating to me.


Looking back on it now, we looked like a mini, but bad, Gwen Stefani group. Carolyn being Gwen Stefani and Athena and I being the Harajuku girls.

We were so into TY beanie babies. I invested a lot of birthday money into those 5 dollar beanbags of cute. I even bought a handbook listing all of the Beanie babies and their value rates in the future. (Recently I read a post on the top ten useless collectors items, TY beanies were on the list..FML)
We had our own favorite animal mascot that we carried all over the place. Mine was a penguin, Carolyn's was a frog. Athena (already exhibiting signs of indecisiveness that would grow as she did) had numerous beanies. One day it would be a fox, a giraffe, a seal, dolphin..etc

We did little plays and musicals with our beanie babies. I was the most enthusiastic out of them. Making mini cereal boxes out of empty tic tac containers, little scarves, hats, clothes, chairs, tea sets..etc. Our beanies had their own personalities, my penguin was the troublemaker/thug, Carolyns frog was sweet and clumsy and Athena's...well they kept changing...thinking about it now, perhaps these beanies were a reflection of our personalities..

Then junior high came along, and we grew out of our Beanie Babie phase (me unwillingly so) and things like boys, clothes and High School came into focus. As eighth grade approached its end, I knew that we would go our separate ways. I was going to try and go to the same school Carolyn did, an all girl, Catholic school, (Athena was going to a public school, and on Staten Island, the schools were zoned by the area you lived in, and since I didn't live near Athena, I couldn't go to her school) but my procrastination got the best of me..because I didn't send in my forms on time and I ended up at Tottenville H.S.

and...this is a very condensed version of my childhood.

I want to say a lot more about my days at E.L.S..but I think that is a post to be saved for another time.

For now..enjoy these photos!

Drawing with my headphones on..this began at a very age apparently

my grandma

My parents used to tell me that I was shipped to them in a Fed-Ex box from jungle people and they would show me this photo of my Grandma happily opening the box.

Now its time to get innappropriate and show you a nude photo of me in the shower ;D

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muahahaha