Urban Village of Pasadena

I've always wanted to find an outlet for my writing. Right now I have the opportunity to write on this website given that I have a login. (Actually, people who do not have logins are also able to write on this website by commenting on other blogs.) I was watching my two and a half year old son Jude today. I took him to Magnolia Park on 15th and San Antonio around 3:30 PM. There was hardly anyone at the park when I first got there. There were two men who looked as if they were using metal detectors. From far away it looked as though they were blowing leaves with wind-blowers. I was disappointed to see that there were not too many people at the park. Later, while swinging with Jude on the swings, a man and his son came. They were playing football and baseball. It was fun watching them. I also enjoyed pushing Jude on the swing; for some reason, he really likes it when I push on his legs to move him back and forth - I actually was trying to help him understand how to "pump", as I later heard the term being used by a mother in the playground on the other side of the park.

It was funny being there. I was disappointed at first, but even though we didn't interact with the other father and son, just their presence made the park feel a little less lonely. I was a little worried that Jude would get sick, because as soon as we got to the park, I noticed that all-too-familiar clear-looking liquid coming out of Jude's right nostril. I put my beanie on him to warm him some. I figured it was a little bit of a chance, but I didn't want to have to bring him back, especially since I hadn't really spent much time with him all day, and since I was still hoping our time at the park would turn out to be fruitful. After some time, Jude got bored, so we went to the north side of the park to check out the playground designed for older children. There we found a mother and her daughter. The mother seemed very involved: playing hide-and-seek, experimenting with the various park equipment by herself, thus piquing her child's interest. On the way there I saw a young man slapping his girlfriend's butt. I considered that humorous. Oh, those crazy kids! (I think she shook it a couple of times, too, but I'm not supposed to notice that.) There was also a man doing chin-ups. He was driving a van that provided some type of medical service, presumably for the elderly. The father and son whom we saw earlier also came.

Jude likes exploring playground sets, but sometimes he gets scared of slides. There was one slide that was enclosed, like a long tube, and he was very shy of going down it. It was interesting. I've noticed that about him. He likes to climb, though. One of the ladders looked sort of difficult to climb for a kid his age; at first I thought he could make it from the bottom, but it turned that after the third or fourth rung up, he headed back down. Oh well. I told him when he got older it would be no problem for him. It was really fun watching the mom play with her daughter. She seemed to enjoy it so much. Sometimes I daydream when I watch Jude. I think he can tell. I like the chasing game, where I pretend I'm a type of monster and I chase Jude around, repeating his name in a strange, lower-pitched, voice. That's always fun. Today he didn't go for it, though. Around 4:50 PM I told him that we had to try using the restroom. He didn't resist, which is always wonderful. He peed a little bit in his underwear so I had to take it off.

I felt pretty proud of being able to take him to the park today. On the way back from the park he was kind of quiet. I think riding in the bike has a sort of calming effect for him. If I do it long enough, he just falls asleep. It's funny, sometimes I'll talk to him on the bike as we're going down. On the way there I mentioned an experience I had while riding my bike down 18th Street, and he just said, "Uh huh." Cute.

Upland is my hometown. I came here in '83, when I was seven years old. It was a big transition for me. Prior to that we lived in West Covina. Most of my classmates in Upland where Caucasian. That was new for me, even though, I had had Caucasian classmates as a young boy in West Covina. It was very scary to change schools, but I adjusted quickly. Since I was into video games at the time (wow, I was only seven), my first task in coming to Upland was to find all the video game arcades. Back in the day there was an arcade called Starcade in the shopping plaza on the southwest corner of Foothill and Mountain. That shopping plaza is still there, as is the Stater Brothers supermarket that was next to Starcade, but Starcade is long gone. It's only a memory for me at this point, a memory of a two-level arcade, somewhat sparse, like the space could have used a lot more video games, but they had a cool deal where (if my memory serves me correctly) on Sundays you could get seven tokens for a dollar. I remember at some point, at the center of the arcade at the lower level they had the game Dragon's Lair. That was such a classic. Most video games back in '83 cost a quarter to play - most today cost about a buck! - so back then, when Dragon's Lair was averaging a fifty cent charge where ever it was found, as a kid with a dollar to spend for the next hour or so, you had to ask yourself whether or not you wanted to spend half your bankroll on that game. I liked Dragon's Lair but I was never very good at it. I could make the first six or seven screens, but there came a point in the game where you had to anticipate which screen you were going to be thrown into, because if you didn't, you wouldn't be able to push the joystick left or right or whatever direction the game expected you to push it in order to register the correct move. I remember when I was back in West Covina at the Sega Center arcade in the Puente Hills Mall seeing someone beat the game. Back then some of the video games had an extra monitor on top of the console so that if you were watching as a spectator, you could see the action, especially if you were short or if you didn't want to be breathing down the player's neck. Here's to video game greats of the past.

I went to elementary school at Baldy View on 11th Street, just east of Mountain. The school is still there; so is the Baptist church just south of it. I've passed by the school a few times in the last couple of years. The thing I notice different about the school as it stands now than when I attended is that there is an iron gate that now surrounds it. We didn't have that as a kid, and though I'm sure I would have gotten used to it if we had had the gate, too, I can't help feeling of entrapment or incarceration on behalf of the kids now there. Isn't childhood supposed to be the time when you at least feel free?

I have some good memories of elementary school. My best friend at the time was a boy named Brian Kim. I didn't get to know him until fourth grade, but we became really close. We were always competing against each other. In the fourth grade spelling bee he ended up beating me, but in the fifth grade I got my revenge. In the sixth grade I decided not to compete for religious reasons. Sixth grade was an interesting time for me. I drifted from him a little bit, started hanging out with the "cool" kids, though I never ended up fitting in with that crowd. I started reading the Bible a lot, talking to kids about God, quitting stuff like playing the clarinet because I didn't see how that fit into a life of discipleship. I also had crushes on girls. I think that's when that really started for me. I remember my last day of school, feeling really sad, having to say goodbye to everyone.

In junior high I attended Pioneer over on 18th and Euclid. The first day was scary as hell. It seemed like a madhouse - a bunch of kids I'd never seen before roaming all over campus. Everyone seemed to be talking and reacquainting themselves with everyone around them. I felt really lost. My first class was history with Mrs. Hibbard. She was a woman, who I believe was in her 40s or 50s, it's been so long. She was fantastic. I always suspected her of not being a Christian since whenever I pulled that Christianity shit on her, she just seemed to disapprove. Although one time I remember she invited to our class a former of hers who happened to a Christian recording artist. I was kind of like, "What the hell?" I really wasn't into Christian music back then, but after the class she approached me and said, "So Joe, what do you think?" I think it was her way of trying to relate to me after all the run-ins we'd had with each other.

I don't remember all the grades I got in junior high, though I do remember getting only a B+ in Physical Education in the 7th grade. Throughout junior high, P.E. was my favorite class. One of my P.E. teachers was Mr. Carrow, the other was Mr. Wilson who, according to rumor, was an ex Olympian in some skiing event. He used to kick his leg up when he would stand up in front of us and bark at us - Lawrence, one of my friends in both grades, loved to mimic this behavior of his. I had a bunch of goofballs for classmates. One of them was a guy by the name of Mike Pike - no joke - who used to try to get away with faking doing his push-ups. Now that I think about it I think most of us tried to get away with doing half-ass exercises of one form or another. Another was this guy named Justin McGuire. The reason I remember him was because he picked on me a couple of times. He was an aggressive sort. Not good looking, but charismatic, in his own way. He had a dark complexion, strange for a Caucasian. I hated him.

I always wonder whether or not I was severely traumatized by the boys who picked on me in junior high. I was different. I talked a lot about God, I'd ignore certain social conventions, like paying attention to the types of clothes I wore or asking certain questions in normal, polite conversation, the types of things that if I just let things go I would have ended up doing naturally but at the time I felt as if I had to deconstruct and rebel against. What can I say? Make no mistake, though, I was one bright motherfucker, even if now I do wonder whether or not what really made me different was having an undiagnosed, but mild case of Asperger's.

Despite all this I managed to make socialize well enough. My best friends in 7th and 8th grade were Johnny Bennett, Lawrence Lim, Eric Livingston, Keyman Aum, Brian Rizzo, and Eugene Chen. Of course I had other friends, too - Brad Hoyt, Brian Bachelor, Mike Barboni, Andres Gentre, Matt Doyle, Darryl and Wade, and Josh Butler. I don't think I really had any female friends at the time. That theme, by the way, followed me even into high school and early college.

These friendships were in danger of becoming very short-lived, given that I didn't attend Upland High like most of them did. I had a funny living arrangement growing up - my Dad wanted me (according to him, he'd planning this since I was four) to attend a parochial school called Don Bosco Technical Institute out in Rosemead. But in order to do it because my dad worked so close to our house in Upland (like, less than a mile), he wanted me to live with my mother out in Rosemead during the week so I could attend this school. My dad went through all the trouble of buying a townhouse a mile away just so I could go there. Problem was, my heart was still in Upland and with my Upland friends. So even though I made friends in Rosemead, despite my early attempts not to, I still kept in contact with guys like Lawrence and Keyman and Eric and Brian, especially during the summertime, when we would come back to the Upland house. I remember those summers being a lot of fun. My favorite times were trying to meet up with them and some of their friends at a local school to play a game of five-on-five basketball. I was pretty good compared to most of them - and I loved the game. I later found out from Keyman that some of them got kind of tired of playing basketball all the time so they wanted to try something different. At some point Keyman got some of them to try baseball. It was more like tee-ball, except without the tee, but at least they were doing something they enjoyed or at least felt more comfortable with from an athletic perspective.

At the time I considered Eric my best friend. His parents ended up divorcing our sophomore or junior year of high school. They were living in Cincinnati when it happened, and not too long afterward, he came back to visit us for a couple of weeks. It was so good to see him again. Even while he was in Cincinnati we would write letters and talk on the phone, usually for about an hour each time. He had sort of rediscovered his faith around this time. I remember his talking about Young Life, the Christian group on his high school campus. One of his best friends was a young man by the name of Kip. From his description of him, he seemed like a very charismatic, energetic guy, though not without his weaknesses. I remember Eric's telling me about his prom, different dreams he'd have - dreams which he considered prophetic - in some ways it was like he was still around. During the summer of my freshman year in college I took a trip to visit him out in his green paradise. I saw his dad who looked like he'd lost a lot of weight. It was really sad to see. I'm sure the divorce had taken its toll on him. I actually liked his dad a lot more than I liked his mom, who was somewhat suspicious of me - I was always vocal about Christianity, about being born again and all. But his dad would play chess with me, joke with me, just was a little bit more accepting. At some point during our sophomore year in college, Eric, who was now living in Burbank, not far away from where I was attending college, got married to a woman whom he'd gotten to know through his small church. I wouldn't call her attractive, but she certainly wasn't ugly. She was about his height, average build, brown hair, brown eyes. At the time for whatever reason I just sort of assumed that I was going to be his best man at the wedding. I remember having the conversation with him over the phone when he told me he was engaged. I stumbled into the conversation and after he told me, after a pause, that his brother was going to be the best man, well, I was pretty sad. It was around this time that I had begun taking (and temporarily getting off of) psychiatric medications. During a time of my withdrawals when I was experiencing very strange side effects, I acted really strangely. Everything I said and did was pretty over-the-top. I know during that time our relationship was kind of strained. One time I had laid into him for not finishing his college degree, and the next day he confessed to me that he was pretty offended by it. Another day I kind of made a fool of him, me, and his friend Chris while we were in line at a ski resort. I don't remember what I said, only that it included a bunch of yelling and profanity. I don't think our relationship was ever the same after that period. Maybe part of it was that he'd moved on - he'd found a church he considered home a wife, maybe even a new best friend. But I could tell that things weren't going to be the same.

I lost track of Keyman. I tried visiting his house once, hoping his mother would answer the door, and I could ask her about him, but I haven't seen him for at least fifteen years, maybe more. Same with Brian. Brian was a good-looking kid. I remember Lawrence saying that he was always joking and that you could never take him seriously. I liked him. I never really considered him as close as Eric, but it was fun hanging out with the two of them.

Lawrence is still in my life, thank God. After college, we'd actually been roommates for about three years. I'm trying to think of the words to summarize the experience. I don't know if I'd call them good, necessarily, there certainly was some conflict, but on the whole - yeah, I guess it was good. I could recount a lot of stories about Lawrence, starting from 7th grade when we first met. I think the most touching story I can remember was the time when we were in the lunch area. Back then the 7th and 8th graders had lunch during the same time. Lawrence and I along with our other friends were eating at a table when, out of nowhere, someone from the table behind me came up to me, picked me up, and put me on an exposed ice cream sandwich just to the left of me. After I realized what happened, I was in shock; I didn't even know who these assholes were. I think all my friends were kind of like, "What the fuck just happened?" But before I could even respond, Lawrence walked over, stood me up, and escorted me to the boys restroom which was just about forty yards away. We went inside and he started wiping down my pants paper towels from the dispenser. I don't even think he even said anything. It all happened so fast. As soon as he was done we just walked right back and went on with business as usual.

He's the one friend I've been able to keep in contact with. We were roommates after college for a few years and when I began my studies at Fuller Seminary, he, too ended up landing in Pasadena. Right now he lives over on Sierra Madre and Colorado. I see him about every week because of a prayer meeting that includes John Barkman and his fiancee Linda. He's a good guy.