By looking at someone’s past, you gain a better perspective of that person’s present. Sociocultural theory claims that we are a product of our time and place. My time started in the summer of 1986; my place was a small city in Kansas. Even from birth, it seemed that the world had it out for me. I was a yellow baby, and not just because I am of oriental descent. Diagnosed with jaundice as a newborn, I was kept in the hospital for observation. I would like to think that I was clairvoyant at the time and didn’t want to exist in the world, so I held in my excrement. My efforts failed when a nurse attempted to take my temperature, you may guess what kind of thermometer it was. In retaliation I let it all out on her.
As far as my early childhood, you could say that I was a sheltered kid growing up in the nicer part of Fresno. I wasn’t allowed to go out very often. I played the violin and piano more than I played with friends. I wore prescription glasses as big as my face because my parents thought that it would give my vision a wider range of clarity. I had braces from the middle of elementary till the middle of high school. I wore clothes my mom picked out, typically sweat pants and tacky shirts that most kids wouldn’t be caught dead with nowadays. I even wore boxers as shorts to school one day unknowingly. Speaking of the fashion of America’s current youth, what the hell? If you aren’t wearing the latest designer shirt, ripped jeans, and a 59fifty hat with the sticker still attached, then you’re not cool. Kids nowadays are so obsessed with establishing a shallow copied identity. Every generation is seemingly trying to grow up quicker than the last.
Back on topic. Not only was I sheltered but I was also a late bloomer. Throughout elementary and junior high, I was usually the shortest guy in any of my classes. Till the day I die, I will remember being rejected by the girl I liked at a school dance in junior high because I was “too short for her”. My growth spurt didn’t hit till my junior year in high school, the same year I became taller than my mother and beat her at arm wrestling. In my defense, she is a fairly strong woman.
Hahaha! My mom was strong too... still is! I couldn't agree more about the fashion craze people seem to envelope themselves in. It's sad really... I've found that I like a style more once it isn't "hip" anymore. Take the UGs phase. Kinda like it now; now that not everyone and her broither find them so very cool. And I REFUSE to sport a Brand Name. It's like I'm a walking bill board for gooness sake!
ReplyDelete