This summer I learned three things about my past. Previously tight-lipped about her past, my mother has recently been more willing to talk about the circumstances of our family's lives more than twenty years ago. Perhaps my mother and I are both realizing that these summer vacations where I get to spend months at home are going to become few and far between. In our time spent together this summer, I have strangely come to learn a lot about myself, things I would never have discovered on my own.
Incredible things like,
I. My godfather was a leader of a Taiwanese triad.
When my mom was working as a waitress in Madison to support the family (Dad's measly income for being a PhD student couldn't feed 3 mouths), she struck up a great working relationship with her boss Bobby, who would later be named my godfather. According to their rival restaurant's proprietor, wee Bobby worked for said rival restaurant when he was just a laddy with a penchant for busing tables and sharpening katanas. (I'm assuming all Asian mobs use katanas, for why wouldn't they?) After having a irreconcilable disagreement with his boss, being the enterprising little mobster my god-daddy was, he rallied up his contacts and founded his own restaurant, while at the same time demanding that the rival restaurant be shut down. Only after certain negotiations,which I'm hoping involved machetes and outrageous fake-italian accented curses, were they allowed to keep their business open and running. He's not an unreasonable man, that god-daddy of mine.
Of course, after this casual reveal by my mom halfway through dinner last night, all I could think of was whether the crisp $100 bill he sent me for my 10th birthday (practically like handing over the keys of a Swiss bank to a kid that age) came at the cost of some high-stakes criminal shenanigans. I can only dream.
II. I was a left-hander by birth, right-hander through conditioning.
I almost cried when I heard this. All my life I held a deep obsession for left-handers while cursing the heavens for forcing upon me a life time of cheap, common right-handedness. As it turns out, it was apparently my parents who forced little defenseless James to switch over to using his right hand. Their reasoning was that the world was built for right-handers, and didn't want me to always have to be in combat with the right-handed chopstick user on my left at the dinner table. Friends have always asked me why I hold my fork and spoon the left-handed way, and I just always said it felt right. Mom and Dad, you can try to suppress this but my true nature will find dastardly ways to reveal itself. Soon.
III. I was a foul mouthed sassy little bitch at the age of 2.
This should come to no surprise to anyone who knows me, but it actually surprised me. According to my mother, when I was a little toddler just mastering the basic ABCs of pejorative curses and racial slurs, a woman walked into the elevator we were occupying. I took one look at the woman and proclaimed in a most amazed voice to my mother: "Mom this woman is TOO UGLY!". To my credit, years later when she told the story to me, mom did affirm that the woman was indeed of a hog-faced disposition. I can only hope the poor lass didn't have her life shattered by a sassy-mouthed toddler.
