My Earliest Life Memory and First Fights

It’s funny that my earliest life memory at the age of 3 to 4 yrs old is spending time with my then girlfriend, Choi.  Choi was also 3 to 4 yrs old and considering the environment I grew up in, in Long Island, NY it was quite remarkable that around the corner from my house was this beautiful Japanese family.  For probably two years, Choi would walk down the road with a baby carriage dressed in white linen and glowing in the sun across the warm paved streets.  She would knock on the door and we would walk together holding hands and pushing the doll carriage.  Our parents would take pictures and I still have vivid images of her mother and the fresh lightly floral smells of her home.  I am not sure how the initial meeting happened but it seemed like we were a thing, since before I could remember.  How amazing is it when you don't remember ever having to ask someone out.  When there was no vulnerability, just automatic acceptance and love.  As I became a little boy, I had started playing sports with the boys on her street.  I began becoming shy and self conscious about girls and the older boys in the neighborhood were making fun of us for both being a couple and for being Chinese (even though we were Korean and Japanese).  I remember her coming to my door and knocking with the baby carriage as usual and I stopped answering the door.  I began hiding and eventually she stopped coming.  I would go down her street everyday and play the typical seasonal football, hockey, basketball, and baseball with the guys almost in front of her house.  Until one day I realized she had moved away and I never saw her again………. I know I was just becoming a young boy, but I can still see her walking away disappointed when I wouldn't answer the door and my heart still breaks like it was yesterday when I think about it.  Somehow I still feel guilt about it and I might even be shedding a tear, maybe more now as I write this.  Now in my late 40’s I can say that I have been the person on both sides of the glass maybe not as many times as most others,  but several times now.  My brief but memorable time with Choi was a simple pure and easy love.  I mean she was literally somehow living around the corner from my house and us being asian and cute, somehow just made us a match.  Looking back, I do think it was such a wonderful example of childhood love and I feel blessed to have experienced, despite me being a jerk in the end.

About 5 or 6 years old in my childhood home living room in Coram, New York. Probably about 1979 or 80.

My parents met one another in Levittown, Long Island, NY, which is known to be the 1st suburb in the U.S.  They met when they were about 14 years old.  My father who was a big strong young man was expelled from his school for fighting and he met my mother after switching schools.  They began dating and my mom really grounded my father and he turned his young life around, eventually becoming a decorated police officer, including being a supervisor of NY S.W.A.T. Team  and Bomb Squad.  When my dad was 21 and mom 20 they married.  So including dating, they were together for almost 50 years, until my mother’s passing at the young age of 63 yrs old in 2007.  My father and mother never dated anyone else ever, so you can imagine when my mother passed away from cancer literally a year away from retirement, my father was totally lost and without perspective in terms of finding a loving and caring companion anywhere near what mother was.  My parents marriage wasn’t always wonderful, but they were my shining example of how marriage was supposed to be in terms of staying together and forming a very loving family around that.  For me it wasn’t necessarily that I picked up on being married at at a young age, but I always thought I was supposed to meet my wife to be at a young age.  It was kind of my vision of what I wanted, I was a romantic or at least chasing a particular girl since I was 5 yrs old in Kindergarten pretty much until this present day.  I think these two factors,  really shaped me into the loving “one woman” mentality that I embodied throughout my young and adult life.  It contributed to my exceedingly hyper sensitive, empathetic, and loyal demeanor as a passionate and classic “empath”!   I am not ashamed to admit that  empath classification and honestly, despite lots of time of frustration and longing, I also wouldn't change the "one woman " mentality.  

1983 4th Grade Emmanuel Lutheran - Mrs. Flammann - East Patchugue New York.

Me, 4rd grade 1983 Private school Class Pic ( I am Front Row Center), Emanuel Lutheran School (my sister Liz, also went there 3 yrs ahead of me), Mrs. Flamminn - my warmest and most caring teacher I think. She really was kind to me and everyone.  

That was a good year in my mind. I went to this school from Kindergarten thru 6th grade with almost the same kids throughout the time.  I remember 75% of their full names.  I remember the look and smell of each of the 7 classrooms I was in over those years, my desk position in the class, and my general feelings, emotions, and thoughts during each year.  Dwayne Thompson (3rd from left back row) was my 1st school friend 1st day of school at 5 yrs old.  Of Note in this pic: I was probably pretty thrilled to be seated in front right next to my 1st crush Heather Blum (directly on the left of me), was chasing her the first day of Kindergarten all the way until 6th grade ended.  Of course we dated for a very very short period, but most of the 7 yers was chasing HAHAHAA.  But then that year, there was a new girl (2nd Row far right) forget her name now, Amy Schroeder,…. She was sophisticated and spunky but only was there only that one year which wasn’t long enough for her to fully realize my charms, in other words she wasn't fully feeling the romance with me:).  I had a little hand holding event with Karen Rhodie 5th from left 2nd row, but Heather was the one and unfortunately I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

​I had my 1st and 2nd fight that year against Todd Hughes (1st on left 2nd row), both times he had called my best friend Dwayne the “N” word each time, which I remember being just physically enraged by.  I guess I had determined that I was the race police at my school and I was a red belt in Tae Kwon Do by then, so look out:). 3rd fight was against Frankie (front row to the right of me).  We were all playing in a school team football game, I think in Eisenhower State Park, NY.  Frankie was playing around on the sidelines and started choking Dwayne with his headband.  With full football gear on I charged and tackled my own teammate Frankie, which mind you was GENERALLY DISCOURAGED on your own sidelines during a football game :).  OK, if you know me you will know that I am a very gentle person and caring person (a lover not a fighter), even as a young person.  I was always all about bringing people together.  I remember feeling bad about the idea of using Karate on anyone as I felt like I might hurt someone and my Korean Master Lee would have been upset if I used anything but self-defense.  To this day, I have never used a kick against anyone in a fight and hopefully I have fought my last physical fight in my life by now.  I did have several more physical fights in my teenage years, but what I will say is that besides the football game tackling, ALL of MY FIGHTS (except one attempted mugger fight) were about prejudice and race.  Funny thing is Dwayne didn't need me to defend him or fight for him, as he was bigger and stronger than I was.  I member wondering why Dwayne didn't feel the urge to immediately fight for himself, as I believe he would have won that fight.  But I also remember seeing his crying eyes and I could feel how paralyzing the "N" word was at that moment for him.  It wasn't a fight he wanted to have and I could see the utter shame on his face that he was put into this situation, that he was forced to address racial slurs and discrimination in front of the girls he liked, within our friend circle, and at the school he had gone to all his life like all of us there had.

I remember my school principle, Mr. Albert, thought I was a trouble maker as I had been to sent to his office for each of these fights.  Mrs. Flammann went on maternity leave, so we had the Principle Albert as sub teacher for a while and he was very strict.  What was interesting was he quickly realized that I was bright and I became maybe his favorite student.  That would help me later on as I would get in some trouble later in 5th and 6th grade too:) 
   
Do I regret these childhood fights?  I regret having to have them!  I honestly didn't and don't have regret about having those fights, as they weren't really a choice in my mind,  In each instance, I was angry and it wasn't really even a decision about fighting, it was going to happen then and there.  I was called “Chinaman” and “Chink”, my whole life, even by people who later became my close friends.  That was the landscape I was living in in middle class Coram, NY.   The perhaps perplexing and strange thing is looking back now, it was meant to be that way and I was meant to be the only or one of the few asian people everyone I met in my life growing up would have encountered.     ​

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Back row 1st on left Aimee Bianca, who was the smartest I think and she had skipped up a grade too.  Her brother Jeff was a year ahead of us and her great mom was a music teacher there. Aimee and Dwayne both went to the same public school after Emmanuel Lutheran.  She eventually graduated from NYU and I still follow her and her lovely young son Instagram.  Dwayne I am not sure where he went to school after, but I am sure he did, as he was a state champion wrestler and a strong athlete in high school.  I saw Aimee and her brother Jeff in a NY bar during Thanksgiving one college year and she told me She and her family always tell several stories about my childhood days during Holiday diners!   I have no doubt there are several families that still discuss and find universal humor in the follies of my young life.  One other family would be the Castros.  Nancy Castro (2nd row 4th from the left) was in my class for those 7 years and our parents were friends and over the years we would go on vacations together and I even would fill in at their restaurant when they needed help.  I am pretty sure they bring up a story or several of my elementary school life as a family every once and again.  Of course, I am glad I can entertain!  Good times and for sure I was a FREE SPIRIT and a Peace Warrior!