I got used to the antiseptic smell and the hovering sickness of the hospital as well as any teenager did, confronting subjects of life and death after my father had a massive heart attack when I was 15.
Ramblings while on a slow suburban death.
Category: Childhood
Bertha and I seemed live on trains in Japan, moving in little circles around the Kansai areas of Kyoto, Maibara and Nara, inciting small children to cause trouble while making plenty of our own.
Although I was never an official card carrying member of Berkeley Farm’s 49er Minor Club, I always managed to sit in that far end zone section during those lean years when our boys were a doormat for the rest of the NFC West.
On the occasion of the San Francisco Giants’ first Japanese American Day at Candlestick Park, both the Rokushige Fujima Dance Troupe and the San Francisco Taiko Dojo were asked to provide the pre-game entertainment.
(old Weight Watcher recipe card)
Of all matters concerning weight and appearance, I lagged behind all young 14-year-old girls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NVVe1DkVsQ
All you had to do was turn on KDIA-AM to hear Sly and the Family Stone’s “Hot Fun In The Summertime” flying across the airwaves.
(Dapper Daddy and just friend)
My father left Ilocos Sur in the Phillippines for Hawaii when he was 14 years old, obtaining forged documents to make it appear that he was old enough to join his older brothers as workers on a pineapple plantation. He followed other Filipinos who made their way to the United States, hoping to find better opportunities away from a home country that offered nothing but poverty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBqc_kbVDVg
Nothing says Denmark more than a giant reptile snaking its way around overhead passes, regenerating its blown-to-smithereens body parts so that it enjoys near immortality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swC1wZAJ5lU
In the monster world, the Biblical of equivalent of Cain and Abel exists in the form of two Gargantua brothers, one colored a motley green while the other, a light chocolate brown.
(Nice nuns from the film “The Sound of Music”)
I suppose there are some teachers out there who realize that, in the throes of their venomous behavior, there might be a student or two who might grow up to write about them. I do not think this occurred to Miss C, who was my grammar and junior high school instructor.