The Ol' Switch-a-Roo

There was one of the rare occaisions that Goh, Jenny, and Wei actually drove up to San Francisco one weekend. Wei was about 1 or 1.5 years old, or so, I think. Anyway, the reason they came up was because Goh and Jenny had to go to a company function that evening. Obvioiusly, they couldn't take Wei with them. The problem was that Goh and Jenny couldn't leave Wei alone. Wei had the worst case of separation anxiety I've ever seen in a 1 year old, and she had the lungs and yelling capacity to prove it (a trait inherited from Goh, no doubt).

Goh was sitting on the sofa chair in the corner with Wei sitting on the floor with her back to him, clinging to the leg of his jeans. Coincidentally, I was also wearing jeans. I came up with a quick scheme: while Wei was temporarily distracted by someone in front, Goh would slip off to the side and I would quickly take his place. Wei, sitting on the floor with her back to the sofa chair, wouldn't know the difference until Goh and Jenny were safely away or until she turned around. It was the best idea I could come up with, anyway, and no one else offerred any bright ideas so we tried it. And it worked!

Wei was happy and content for about 10 minutes after Goh and Jenny left for their function. Then Wei decided to turn around and noticed that it wasn't her ba-ba sitting behind her, but me. Wei then decided to test the hearing acuity of our neighbors on the corner of our street for the next 30 minutes or so. I did my best to comfort the little booger, bouncing her up and down while holding her, showing herself in the mirror, giving her my stuffed E.T. to play with. But nothing would stop the Iron Lung; she would stop when she decided to. Just when I thought my hearing was about to go, the deafening cacophony of the banshee's wails died down. Oh, thank God. My hearing would be preserved after all. But how much of it I lost, who could tell?

So Wei made a new buddy that night, and we were buddies for about 20 minutes more until my friends came to pick me up. Whelp! Gotta go! As I walked towards the door to leave, my niece decided once again to subject our neighbors to a hearing test. To make things a bit easlier, I took her to the front door with me where I would hand her off to Mom, and then jump in my friends' car. Easier said than done. As I was trying to hand her off, Wei grabbed the sleeve of my shirt with the Vulcan death grip and wouldn't let go. I had to pull and tug for a bit while Wei was reaching out towards me, but I finally broke free and jumped in Rich's car.

"Man, that is one attached kid," said Rich.
"Yeah," I replied. I couldn't help but feel kind of guilty because it was almost like I was deserting my niece. But not really; not like I was leaving her with a complete stranger. She was at home with Mom and Dad. Who would be better to take care of her than those two? And if Wei wanted to get in to a screaming match, Mom was there to rise to the challenge.

Looking back, it was the ol' switch-a-roo that began the night's festivities.

Speaking of the Ol' Tercel

That last post reminded me of Gung's good ol' 1987 Beige Toyota Tercel that Mom had to buy for $2,000 bucks. It was a good little car, clean, no major damage (until I drove it). Anyway, I remember driving Janine and Mui to McDonald's one day. The goal of the trip was to get something for the booger to eat and a chance for Janine and I to hang out.

So there we were, driving along Sunset Boulevard when this idiot in this van crept out in to the intersection. Being that he was stopped at the intersection and since I had the right of way, I just kept on going. But so did he. Slowly and stupidly, he crept his van out in to the middle of the street while I was just cruising on down the street, naively thinking he would stop like he was supposed to. But he didn't! By the time I realized he wasn't going to stop, I was about 10 feet from him going 35 miles/hour. "OhVince! Watch out!" Janine called out, as I swerved the car deftly to the right to avoid the on-coming van that STILL did not slow down. As I passed the van, I could hear the passenger in the van screaming; that's how close I came to the other vehicle. Talk about doing Titan's Turn!

Just after passing the idiot in the van, we continued on down the street in stunned silence. All of us, except for Mui, who said out loud in her monotone voice, "Ngo-dei jong che?" (we got in-to a car accident?) completely oblivious to the gravity of the situation we had just avoided. There was no concern, no worry, no excitement. It was as if she wanted to know what time it was, or what the weather was like. I, on the other hand, almost crapped in my pants, as I'm sure Janine almost did, too.

And I thought I had nerves of steel.

House of D

Recently, Richel and I watched a movie written, directed, and produced by David Duchovny called "House of D". It's one of those coming-of-age movies about a young boy who grows up and becomes the way he is. Later on, as a grown adult and a father, he returns to his routes to confront his past and fears. It's a great movie but it didn't do well at the box office because there were no really big box-office names, except for Robin Williams, but he wasn't even the main character.

Anyway, in the movie Duchovny races across town on his bike to his home on his son's 13th birthday. He promised his son a bicycle ride with him but Duchovny gets there so late that his son has already fallen asleep. Watching this scene brought back some memories for me when I was back in college.

Back at ol' UCD, I used to drive around Gung's '87 Toyota Tercel, with nothing in it but a tape player and radio. Don't get me wrong; I'm grateful that I had the car, but some AC would be nice, especially up in Davis, CA. And being up in Davis use to be so bloody boring at times, espcially after Quinn graduated and left for med school. I had no one to hang out with or do things with or anything. In essence, I was a loner. Maybe by choice, maybe not. In any case, I was. So there was no point in hanging around the ol' farm town on the weekends. So I used to go home just like many other college kids did. For me, though, the 90-120 minute drive without AC through San Francisco Bay Area traffic during rush hour was sickening, especially after doing it for 2 years straight every bloody weekend. Instead, I used to go over to Gah's place every-so-often. The up side was that I was always taken care of at Gah's house (i.e. I always had something to eat, there was DOOM on Mike's computer, and they had cable). The down-side was traffic wasn't that much better going there, and none of my friends were there, either. But I always did enjoy visiting my sister when I was in college because she was fairly close by. And because I always got to baby-sit Bryan and Nicole. Nicole was still a baby at that time and Bryan was about 3-4 years old.

Whenever I did come over, Gah would always tell Gong-wing that I was coming over. Well, shoot. Who doesn't get all excited when the Yummy Kow-fu comes over? But the thing is I would wait until well after dark, either waiting for traffic and the temperature to die down, or just putzing around at home before I made the trip over. Often times, I would arrive around 10-11pm or so and find little Gong-wing lying on the sofa fast asleep. He had his Yummy blanklet with him, but it's not like he was set to sleep outside in the living room; he had no pillow or blanket to cover up (not like he really needed the blanket, though).

"What's he doing out here?" I asked my sister. I knew Gah did some weird things sometimes and thought this might be one of them.

"He fell asleep waiting for you! He didn't want to go to bed until you came over. What took you so long?" Gah answered. Gee, I sure felt like a @#$@$!$-hole. Just like Duchovny, I got there late. Too late for the little bugger to keep awake. And it happened on more than one occaision, too. You'd think I would learn after the first time. In any case, that's a huge regret I realized I had; a situation that I'll never be able to rectify or return to. Gong-wing is now 15 and doesn't wait up for anyone these days.

Maybe that's why I'm such a stickler for being on-time these days. Or at least I try to. Making adults wait is one thing; making kids wait is a whole different story.